State Acts Early to Defend Crops From Insect Peril

‘Tis the season when Christmas ornaments come down, but $2.7 million worth of new decorations are going up on trees and bushes in California’s big cities.

Trying to defend crops from dangerous bugs without offending city people, the state Department of Food and Agriculture is putting up 18,000 more insect detection traps in the state’s urban regions.

The goal is to spot bug invasions early and stamp them out fast without spraying insecticide from helicopters.

That way, the DFA hopes to avoid organized protests from city dwellers like those that embittered its 1980-82 campaign against the Mediterranean fruit fly in the south San Francisco Bay region, and its eradication of the Mexican fruit fly in Los Angles County this year.

140,000 Traps

By next summer, the state of California will be salted with a record 140,000 traps to detect pests everywhere from the Imperial Valley to the North Coast. State and county workers will be checking them every few days.

Many traps are three-sided cardboard boxes, smeared on the inside with a sticky chemical lure to attract the bugs and then imprison them. The traps monitor pests but are not a weapon for eradication.

The 18,000 new traps are designed for the Medfly and the Mexican and Oriental fruit flies. Three Southland counties--Los Angeles, Kern and Orange--will get 11,000 of them, with another 7,000 destined for the San Francisco area and the San Joaquin Valley.

“We want to find infestations while they are still small,” said DFA Assistant Director I. A. Siddiqui. “The idea is to minimize the need for projects that use aerial sprays.”

No Promises Made

Siddiqui carefully avoids any promise that aerial spraying will not be used again in an emergency.

However, defense is now the name of the game. The state will spend $34.7 million on insect warfare in the current 1984-85 fiscal year. Much of it will be for prevention, including the 16 border inspection stations and the one-time $2.7-million layout to put up the new traps. About $6 million of the money will be raised by direct assessments on growers, mostly in the cotton industry.

Like the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted criminals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has its list of 10 most dangerous insects. As the year ended, four of them were active in California--the boll weevil, the Japanese beetle, the Oriental fruit fly and the Gypsy moth.

The state also has the pink bollworm, another cotton killer; the carob moth, which eats dates, and a spreading invasion of the apple maggot from Oregon.

Raisers of bees for honey and pollination are fretting over the spread of the bee-killing arcane mite in other states. In late 1984, inspections of incoming hives were tightened in an effort to block it from California. There is no control for the mite but destroying beehives.

On balance, the DFA made some progress in 1984 in the struggle with crop pests:

- Nowadays bugs hitchhike all over the world on jetliners. Worried that foreign crop pests might ride in with visitors to the Los Angeles Olympics, state and federal entomologists set up a stiff inspection program. So far, their fears have not materialized, but Siddiqui says the post-Olympic bug watch is still on.

- The state gained ground in its fight against the cotton-destroying boll weevil when Arizona and Mexico agreed to join California in an eradication program. A year ago, DFA Director Clare Berryhill was threatening an embargo on Arizona cotton unless Arizona put up its share of money for the campaign.

- An outbreak of the Mexican fruit fly was eradicated in the Hawthorne area of Los Angeles County in August, after a five-month aerial spraying campaign. It drew strong protests from environmentalists and community organizers.

- At the year’s end, the DFA entomologists still had one active dispute with city people in the Sacramento suburb of Orangevale, where the state has been trying since 1983 to quell an outbreak of the Japanese beetle. The controversy will resume in the spring if the beetle reappears.

There were some scares during the year.

The Caribbean fruit fly, another of the “10 most dangerous,” landed in the San Diego area in February. A quick campaign of spraying from the ground snuffed it out.

There were single finds of the Medfly in traps in Beverly Hills and the Santa Barbara area, but infestations did not develop. Entomologists guessed that the flies were isolated jet travelers from Hawaii.

Two specimens of the peach fly, a notorious crop destroyer in India, were found near Los Angeles International Airport. It was the first time the bug had been seen in North America. A local treatment program apparently wiped it out.

Bug by bug, here is how California’s insect wars are going:

Carob moth--The carob moth eats dates. An emigrant from the Middle East, it was found in 1982 in Riverside County, the only place dates are grown in the United States. The moth since has spread to Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties. There will be no eradication program. Scientists say the moth apparently doesn’t attack navel or Valencia oranges, as they feared earlier. Growers of the $35-million date crop will absorb the cost of dusting dates with malathion and destroying damaged fruit.

Apple maggot--Actually a form of fruit fly, this apple destroyer spread to Northwest California from Oregon, where it is out of control. It was found in Humboldt, Del Norte and Siskiyou counties in 1983. These are the main areas of infestation. This year there were scattered finds in Mendocino, Shasta and Trinity counties.

The state is spending $1.7 million during the current fiscal year on a treatment program to build a buffer zone around the hardest-hit districts and keep the maggot from spreading to major apple-growing districts. A panel of bug experts will recommend a future course of action in this month. If the maggot can’t be stamped out, growers will have to live with it.

Oriental fruit fly--There is a widespread infestation in the Los Angeles area, but it is not one of the Department of Food and Agriculture’s main worries. This insect has been eradicated several times in the past. A chemical extracted from cloves is a strong sex lure for male flies and is used to attract them to pesticides. Aerial spraying isn’t needed. Infestations in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties were stamped out this year.

Mexican fruit fly--An infestation in a 62 square-mile region in Los Angeles County was put down this year. The state for several months resorted to aerial spraying of malathion, the unpopular tactic used in the 1980-82 Medfly fight in the area south of San Francisco Bay. Before eradication was declared in August, the DFA came under fierce fire from environmentalists and civic activists. For the rest of 1984, there were no new finds of the fly, ranked as one of the 10 most dangerous insect pests in the United States.

Gypsy moth--Though fewer Gypsy moths were found in California in 1984, the DFA had to plan 1985 treatment projects for new outbreaks at Felton in Santa Cruz County and Fremont in Alameda County. Unlike most pests, the moth bothers city people more than farmers. Long known on the East Coast, it ravages shade and hardwood trees. Only 25 of the moths were found in California in 1984, compared to 173 the year before.

The moth’s eggs ride into California on garden furniture of East Coast residents moving west. Border inspection programs helped reduce moth entry. Also, agricultural inspectors now check the furniture of new arrivals from the East in the counties where they settle.

Boll weevil--Long rampant in Arizona and Mexico, this historic cotton destroyer has advanced into southeast California. The DFA at all costs wants to keep it out of the San Joaquin Valley and avoid spraying campaigns around cities like Fresno and Bakersfield. In 1984 Arizona and Mexico agreed to join California in a suppression program. It includes plowdowns of cotton land after harvest to destroy the pest’s food supply. The USDA is helping with $1.1 million.

Pink bollworm--Another cotton killer, known as “pinkie” to bug experts. It is blown into California by tropical storms from Mexico. Eradication is out of the question, Siddiqui says. “Pinkie” is now permanently established in Imperial County where growers shoulder spraying costs of $150 to $200 an acre yearly to save their crops. The goal is to keep it under control in the San Joaquin Valley so spraying can be avoided.

The control program includes drops of sterile bollworm moths. The danger area in the valley has been shrinking, but a new “pinkie” hotspot showed up in the Arvin area.

Japanese beetle--The Japanese beetle outbreak in the Sacramento suburb of Orangevale began in 1983 with discovery of 33 of the fruit- and vegetable- eating insects. Currently, it is the DFA’s only confrontation with urban people. “It’s contained, but we haven’t been able to eradicate it,” Siddiqui says. DFA workers attack the beetle with a combination of spraying and soil treatment, in a five-square-mile area with a population of more than 10,000. Much of the work is done in gardens of private homes.

Most Orangevale people go along with the program, but a well-organized minority fights it with court actions and street demonstrations. They charge the state with indifference to people with respiratory disorders and allergies. Dormant now, the controversy will heat up in the spring when the state renews eradication measures.