The state of California is waging war on yet another invasive species that poses a grave threat to the region’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry, officials announced this week.
According to a June 22 news release from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Mexican fruit fly, a voracious pest known to destroy over 50 different types of fruits and vegetables, has been detected in San Diego County. Now, the department is working to rein in the destructive pest by releasing millions of them from special government aircraft, an eco-friendly eradication method known as the the sterile insect technique.
This form of biological control combats wild fly populations by mating them with sterilized flies reared in a lab, rendering offspring impossible. Per the CDFA, these operations are authorized to continue until late December, and the department plans to dump up to 250,000 sterilized Mexican fruit flies per square mile per week in the area. The flies are harvested in a special lab and are usually marked with a special purple dye; they’re then loaded into a plane and dumped from the bottom of the cabin onto cities below…