### id253461907 locust collection methods > Finally, foragers can also take advantage of a common resource used to reduce the chance of famine when locusts swarm (also used by agricultural peoples): eat the locusts. Locusts can often be collected in large numbers when they swarm, and can be dried to allow storage. Locusts can be collected one-by-one when they are on the ground or on plants, but this is relatively labour-intensive. Large scale collection can be done by driving locusts into an enclosure, or a trench, or a stream (which has the advantage of drowning them). Salt lakes in the Great Basin in the USA provided very efficient collection - not only would the locusts drown, they would also be salted, aiding preservation. The Great Salt Lake, in particular, provided large numbers of locusts - the wind would blow drowned (and salted) locusts to shore, where they would accumulate in drifts possibly 6 feet high, and kilometres long. One mathematician (probably Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt) estimated an annual quantity of 1.5 million bushels of drowned locusts due to the Great Salt Lake. Snake Indian groups in the area (who were foraging rather than agricultural peoples) often collected them in large enough numbers to provide 4 months of food over winter. While white settlers in the area saw locusts as a serious pest, indigenous peoples in the area saw them as a valuable food resource. For more on hunting and eating locusts in the Great Basin, see: > > While foraging peoples in other locust-prone areas were not usually blessed with automatic collectors-and-salters like the Great Salt Lake, locusts were regularly hunted and eaten by many of those peoples and could be collected in large numbers when swarming. > > Of course, agricultural peoples could, and often did, collect and eat locusts when they swarmed (not recommended today if the locust swarms have been sprayed with pesticides!).] See also: [[pesticides make locus plagues worse]]- [[how hunter-gatherer communities deal with locusts#id253461907 locust collection methods|View in Vault]]