It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… dumping fruit flies on Los Angeles?
Over the next six months or longer, 250,000 sterile male fruit flies will be dumped from airplanes into a nine square mile radius over Los Angeles County, according to a press release.
The effort will be implemented by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), in collaboration with the USDA and Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner, after two wild Mediterranean fruit flies were found in a Leimert Park home. A start date for the dumpings has not been officially announced.
Ken Pellman, a press representative for the Los Angeles County Agriculture Department, told SFGATE that he believes the flies made it to L.A. via uninspected produce.
On October 23, CDFA announced in the release that they had quarantined a 69 square mile area after discovering the two flies. Neighborhoods in the current quarantine area include Inglewood, Mid-Wilshire, Hyde Park, Culver City and South L.A. — including USC’s campus.
In the Preventative Release Program, the sterile flies will be dumped with the idea that they will mate with female flies but produce no offspring. This will gradually reduce the Mediterranean Fruit Fly population in the area until there are no more left, at which point the dumpings will stop.
According to the CDFA, adult “Medflies” can live up to two months, and the total life cycle of the flies from egg to adult ranges between five weeks to five months. If the species is allowed to grow, the female flies will lay their eggs in fruits and vegetables, causing them to rot.
Those living inside the boundary are advised to keep “homegrown” fruits and vegetables inside their properties and to double-bag them when throwing them away until further notice. The release said that residents should dispose of their fruit in the regular trash, not the compost.
The Medflies dumped into the target area are harvested at a military base in Los Alamitos using a method known as the sterile insect technique, and are marked with purple dye.
Despite any surprise this may cause, this is not the first time sterile members of an invasive species have been dropped on fertile counterparts. The PRP has been in use since 1996 to combat more than a few invasions, including Medflies (another name for the Mediterranean Fruit Fly).
To view the CDFA quarantine map, visit this website.