The Economic Community of West African States has donated the sum of $100,000 to the Liberian Government to help fight devastating insects, which ravaged farms in Liberia and neighboring Guinea.
The World Health Organisation in a statement said the insects are not armyworms but are uncommon.
The $100, 000 was presented to the Liberian President by Olusseini Salifou, ECOWAS Commissioner for Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources and also head of the visiting assessment mission.
Meanwhile, findings made during field verification and evaluation visit by an international team of scientists led by experts from FAO and the Government of Liberia suggest that the potential threats of current and future outbreaks in the ongoing Liberian caterpillar plague could be contained more easily than previously thought.
The team, which visited seven affected areas in Liberia for three days last week, established that the insects were not Armyworms, as had been reported, but larvae of another moth species.
This had raised the spectre of a potentially catastrophic secondary infestation following the first outbreak, which affected some 500 000 people and prompted the Liberian Government to declare a national emergency last week. But team members returning from the field reported villagers destroying cocoons by stamping on them or collecting and burning them. However, this is not enough to prevent their spread to diverse plant species including cultivated crops.
Samples of larvae, pupae and adults were collected for identification. Digital photos were emailed to specialist laboratories in the UK, Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International (CABI) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Biological Control/Biodiversity Centre in Benin. The latter identified the pest as Achaea catocaloides rena Berio (Noctuidae, Catocalinae).
The four-man team, which included FAO experts from Ghana and Sierra Leone, supported by two local entomologists, confirmed that the caterpillars had polluted water bodies and damaged crops such as coffee, cocoa, plantain, bananas and wild flora. Large adult moth populations had also contaminated the environment with their powdery scales, which could cause allergies.
The Liberian Ministry of Agriculture is leading in discussions with FAO and other partners on how to contain the infestation after confirmation of the true identity of the caterpillars involved. This is also the opportunity to develop a better response system against migrant pests in the sub-region based on monitoring, early warning, biocontrol, capacity building and contingency planning.
According to media report the visiting ECOWAS assessment mission to Liberia will determine further aid in the area of medical supplies, spray machines, insecticides and medical supplies.
Tim Vaessen, FAO emergency coordinator told the BBC "Our experts in the field spoke to villagers who said they’d seen this type of caterpillar before. They said they’d put leaves under trees and burned them to suffocate the caterpillar with smoke. But the villagers said they’ve never seen it in such large numbers before, they’re really flabbergasted."
Other members of the ECOWAS team also include representative from ECOWAS Emergency Response Team (EERT), West African Health Organisation (WAHO) and the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Humanitarian and Social Affairs of the ECOWAS commission.