Pest Controll or Murder?

Some time or another we need to learn that life really needs to go on. Even when you watching about two million innocent little birds flutter and literally gasp for that last breath. On Friday last week while sitting in the dining room Kobus- one of our Facilitators- informed us about some last minuet developments. What it came down to was that a colony of red billed queleas were sleeping and breeding on the farm, and needed to be exterminated. Some or another nearby farmer had found them in his crops and followed them here.

The department of agriculture have a policy that they will for free help to exterminate these birds due to their pest status. They ask only that the farmer who has reported the pest, supply the labour for the operation. That includes the demarcation of the area and the removing and burning or burring of the birds.

One thing tough is for sure we learnt lots; not only of the birds but also about how the farm operates and how quickly they operate. And how connected they are to any developments concerning the area on and around the farm.

The Queleas are birds of the weaver family that travel in large colonies. These colonies can cause severe damage to or even destroy a farmers crops. And although they have a life expectancy of only three years a single pair may raise up to eight chicks in one season. In the area there is sorghum, manna and wheat all of which the Queleas feed on. There seems to be a long history with these birds especially in Southern Africa’s farm communities. It is not the size of the colonies that is the problem but it seems rather the dependable food source that we as humans have provided for them. Their natural predators only started dying out after humans started the poisoning, the problem with the birds however came with commercial farming.

We didn’t do the extermination on the Friday as planned but the proceedings started then. The students didn’t take part in the planning but there was allot of that. They needed to find the contaminated area ( I refer to the birds in these term because once you see them as beings it is really hard to come to terms with what seems like mass murder to me.) they needed to research the rules and regulations, the none target species especially those on the red list.

They used an insecticide called Falcolan. It is not diluted and a miniscule amount of ten litres per hectare is sprayed by plane. This is done any time after the sun has set. The demarcated area is sprayed in strokes always starting at one end and then starting at the same end again. We sat nearby and the stench of the toxin was overwhelming, even though we didn’t at first know that was what we smelt.