A looming locust outbreak on the Chinese side of the Sino-Kazakhstan border has been thwarted, thanks to massive spraying of pesticide by airplane, as well as nearly one million locust-loving birds, officials with northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region said.

Local authorities has been building nests since two years ago to attract birds, mainly starlings that love eating locusts, to Tacheng and Altay counties, where the locust plague has always been the worst, said Mu Chen, an official with the Xinjiang office of locust and mouse control.

Every 300 starlings can protect one hectare of grassland from locusts, according to the official.

The starlings are also helped by an army of chickens and ducks raised by local farmers with government subsidies, for the particular purpose of locust devouring.

A duck could consume up to 400 locusts a day, according to local people.

Xinjiang is one of the regions that suffer most from locusts in China, with more than 2 million hectares of pasture being plagued every year, while the area near the Sino-Kazakhstan border has always been the hatching bed of the locust swarms.

This year locusts have been ravaging in the said areas since July and there was up to 60 locusts per square meter in the worst-hit areas.

By July 6, locusts had invaded and damaged pastures totaling 1.45 million hectares, according to the official estimate.

If it had not been for the birds, a much more formidable outbreak of locust would have been inevitable, the locust control office said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 24, 2007)