Thousands flee caterpillar infestation in West Africa
By LYDIA POLGREEN DAKAR, Senegal — A bizarre swarm of caterpillars is munching its way through the forests, cocoa and coffee fields of Liberia, threatening crops and forcing thousands to leave their homes because the bugs have contaminated the drinking water from rivers and lakes. Entomologists have identified the pests as a moth usually found in the forests of West Africa, but normally not in the huge numbers that appeared last month in Bong County, a lush northern region of Liberia, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The infestation threatens crucial crops in a patch of West Africa that includes several impoverished, war-torn countries. The caterpillars have already been found in Guinea, and could appear in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, which borders the region of the outbreak in Liberia, and Sierra Leone, United Nations officials said. … But further testing showed that the caterpillars were actually Achaea catocaloides rena, a species that only rarely appears in such great numbers. The caterpillars live in the forest, and their population is usually kept down by wasps that lay eggs on the moth’s cocoon and eat the caterpillars, Mr. Hammond said. But the rains last year were unusual. Downpours as late as Christmas may have interrupted the reproduction cycle of the wasps that prey on the caterpillars, Mr. Hammond said.
