View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Greenwich Academic Literature Archive 1 A REVIEW OF ALTERNATIVES TO FENTHION FOR QUELEA BIRD CONTROL 2 3 4 Robert A. Chekea* and Mohamed El Hady Sidattb 5 6 a Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich at Medway, Central Avenue, Chatham 7 Maritime, Chatham, Kent, ME4 4TB, UK 8 9 b Secretariat of the Rotterdam Convention, Plant Production and Protection Division (AGP 10 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Viale delle Terme di 11 Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy 12 13 14 *Corresponding author. 15 E-mail address:
[email protected] (R. A. Cheke) 16 1 17 Keywords: red-billed quelea, Quelea quelea, fenthion, fire-bombs, integrated pest 18 management. 19 20 ABSTRACT 21 The red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea) is the most important avian pest of small grain crops in 22 semi-arid zones of Africa. Fenthion, an organophosphate, is the main avicide used for 23 controlling the pest but it is highly toxic to non-target organisms. The only readily available 24 pesticide that could replace fenthion is cyanophos, but this chemical is also highly toxic to 25 non-target organisms, although less so than fenthion, and may be more expensive; however, 26 more research on its environmental impacts is needed. Apart from chemical avicides, the only 27 rapid technique to reduce the numbers of quelea substantially is the use of explosives 28 combined with fuel to create fire-bombs but these also have negative effects on the 29 environment, can be dangerous and have associated security issues.