for implementation of direct crop protection control programs. We have
collected damage assessment information for the period 1965 to 1978
from literature, personal contacts, and field studies in Sudan, Kenya,
and Tanzania. These are summarized below.

H. Schmutterer (Pests of Crops in Northeast and Central Africa) calcu-
lated that annual sorghum losses to red-billed quelea in Sudan amounted
to a monetary loss of LS 200,000 (Sudanese pounds) ($500,000).

Sadig Beshir, Head, Bird and Rodent Section, PPD, placed the estimate
of annual losses of cereal crops to quelea in Sudan at 30 percent in
1977.

A 15-percent average annual loss on 3,000 feddans of sorghum in Umm
Seinat, Kassala Province, was estimated by farmer Hassan Hamid. In
1976/77, a year of heavy quelea damage to sorghum, only 9,000 sacks of
sorghum were harvested, instead of the usual rate of 15,000 sacks per
year. This is a 40-percent loss valued at LS 75,000 ($187,500) for
that year. (Calculation at LS 12.50 ($31.25) per sack.)

In 1975, at Abyei, South Kordofan Province, quelea were reported to
have devastated the sorghum crop to such an extent that sorghum had to
be brought into the region from neighboring areas. A conservative
estimate of this loss can be approximated from a figure of 14,000 sacks
of sorghum, the amount a local trader stated merchants brought to Bahr
el-Ghazal Province in 1977 as their marketable surplus. The value of
the crop lost at Abyei in 1975 would have been over $436,000. It is
reported that quelea and "pigeons" (doves?) continue their depredations
in this area, yet no population reduction measures at Abyei have been
reported by PPD for past years.

Before the helicopter spray campaign of 1977 in the Nyala area, in
southern Dafur, annual losses of millet production to quelea were esti-
mated between 30 to 75 percent.

In October 1976, PPD biologists collected data on sorghum losses at the
State Seed Propagation Farm at Jebel Sim Sim, Kassala Province. The
total production area was 12,000 feddans of various sorghum varieties.
One 150-feddan area was completely destroyed by quelea; 200 additional
feddans were slightly damaged. The 150 feddans had been expected to
yield 600 sacks of sorghum, providing an income of LS 7,500 ($18,750).
Quelea traveled from a breeding colony approximately 1 km from the
seed propagation farm.

In October 1977, PPD and DWRC personnel conducted their first damage
assessment study on approximately 100 feddans of premium Daber variety
sorghum near El Hawata, Kassala Province, 5 km southeast of a quelea