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Animal profile

Rocky Mountain Locust

Melanoplus spretus

InsectaRiver valleys and sandy soils of the Rocky Mountain region, with swarms ranging across the Great PlainsExtinct

Field profile

The Rocky Mountain locust produced the largest insect swarms ever recorded in North America, devastating settler agriculture in the 1870s. Within roughly thirty years it was gone. The last confirmed living specimens date to the early 1900s.

Scope note

This is an editorial profile, not a diagnostic field-identification guide or a substitute for current conservation assessments. Follow the cited sources on each fact for the evidence trail.

Published field notes

2024-06-26

Rocky Mountain Locust

The largest locust swarm ever recorded then vanished

In 1875 an observer estimated a Rocky Mountain locust swarm covering an area larger than several US states. Within about three decades the species was extinct, most plausibly because ploughing and irrigation destroyed the small valley habitat where it bred between outbreaks.

Read with evidence →

Rocky Mountain Locust | Daily Animal Facts