Benefits of locust control in eastern australia - a supplementary analysis of potential second generation outbreaks
This report was commissioned by the APLC to complement the previous analysis by estimating the net benefit of control taking into account the possibility that a second generation of locust may develop in the absence of APLC operations.
In this analysis, all likely outcomes are considered assuming that the APLC did not exist and therefore no control operations would be undertaken. With no control, the likely outcomes are that locusts could migrate into an agricultural area and breed up as a large second generation, resulting in severe infestations in the following season, or the infestation could die down of its own accord or it could be anywhere between these two extremes in the following season. The ‘expected’ benefit-cost ratio depends critically on the probabilities assigned to each possible population trajectory.