Fruit Fly Never Seen Before in U.S. Found at 3 Sites in County

Three specimens of a crop-destroying fruit fly never before seen in the Western Hemisphere have been trapped in Orange County, and state agriculture officials have begun a counterattack hoping to eradicate the fly before it spreads.

Authorities said they do not know for certain where the fly came from, but suspect it came in exotic fruit illegally mailed to California. Two packages of fruit infested with Mediterranean and Oriental fruit fly larvae were found recently at a mail-sorting center in Santa Ana.

Agriculture officials in Sacramento said they do not believe the fly poses as large a threat to California agriculture as the Mediterranean fruit fly did between 1980 and 1982.

During that time, the state spent $100 million on eradication efforts against the so-called Medfly, which threatened California’s $14-billion-a-year agricultural industry.

“Because of the quick reaction, it should not be escalating into anything that even approaches the magnitude of the Medfly,” said Gera Curry, spokeswoman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

Officials said the new pest--the guava fruit fly or Dacus correctus-- is native to parts of Asia and India.

Last Wednesday, the first trace of the insect on this side of the Pacific was found in a backyard peach tree in the 9000 block of Larson Avenue in Garden Grove. The tree contained one of the thousands of insect traps maintained and regularly inspected by the state since the Medfly infestation.

The find prompted state agriculture officials to install 50 more traps in the surrounding square mile. On Saturday, two more of the insects were discovered in new traps in another peach tree in the 14000 block of Shirley Street in Westminster and in a grapefruit tree in the 14000 block of Wilson Street in Midway City.

Brian Taylor, a state entomologist assigned to Orange County, said finding the additional insects indicates that “we probably have some sort of infestation going on.”

But he said it was impossible to tell how severe the infestation is at this time. Additional traps--five per square mile in 81 square miles around Westminster--were being set Monday to get some indication, Taylor said.

So far, no sign of the pest has been found anywhere else in California, Taylor said.

Preparations are under way to begin a “male annihilation” program that, according to Curry, could begin as early as Wednesday.

Under the program, a paste containing methyl eugenol as bait and an insecticide will be squirted high on tree trunks and power poles. The bait lures male fruit flies to the paste, where they become entrapped. The insecticide kills them, cutting down or eliminating the number of male fruit flies available to reproduce.

Officials have not yet decided what insecticide will be used.

Taylor said the paste, which is squirted in 4-inch-diameter blobs high enough to be out of reach of children and pets, will be applied throughout an area covering about 16 square miles and centered in Westminster.

It will be applied to about 600 locations per square mile. “On the normal street, that’s something like every other tree,” he said.

It is, Curry said, “by far the safest and most publicly acceptable” method of combatting the insects.

“Unless people come by and see our workers applying the material with a squirt gun, they don’t even know it’s there,” she said.

According to Curry, the only potential hazard is to telephone and power linemen, and their companies are informed of the applications.

Much More Effective

Taylor said the chemical “is much more effective than what was available to us for the Mediterranean fruit fly.” He said that flies of the guava fruit fly’s genus “are very attracted to it. We’ve had success with others in that genus.

“It’s reasonable to expect that this will take care of it,” Taylor said. “We hope it will. If it doesn’t, we’re in big trouble. We have some knowledge of this pest, but not a whole lot.”

Taylor said that, while the insect normally might prey on certain fruits native to Asia and India, it is uncertain what might attract it in the United States.

“Last year in Los Angeles County we had an infestation of Oriental fruit flies, and we found them in apples,” Taylor said. “It was the first time they were found in apples.”

The guava fruit fly is known to attack citrus fruit.

“This fly is now going to be exposed to fruit it may not have seen before, and it may find them more attractive than what it normally attacks,” Taylor said.

Could Trigger Quarantine

Should the guava fruit fly become a major infestation in California, Taylor said, it could threaten crops in two ways--destruction of the crop itself and quarantine of California produce so that it could not be exported out of infested areas.

Late Monday, however, Taylor said no additional flies had been found since Saturday.

A spokesman for Gov. George Deukmejian said the governor had been made aware of the fruit-fly discovery but had issued no statement or direct orders regarding the problem.

Taylor said state agriculture officials have been concerned for years about fruit-fly infestations resulting from fruit being mailed illegally to California.

Curry said the state Department of Food and Agriculture now suspects that the catastrophic Medfly infestation started in that fashion.

Typically, infested fruit is mailed to someone in California “from the Indian subcontinent or Southeast Asia, and quite possibly, by the time the fruit gets here, it’s rotten and the people throw it out in the garbage,” Taylor said. The larvae then escape to other fruit and can begin an infestation, he said.

Much of the same tropical fruit is grown in Hawaii and has been under federal quarantine there since 1910, when the Medfly infested the islands’ crops. Both packages of infested fruit intercepted last month in the Santa Ana mail-sorting center had been sent by first-class mail from Hawaii.

Inspections Prohibited

“We’ve been having a real problem with first-class mailing of fruit and vegetables from Hawaii, and I assume some of it is coming from Southeast Asia,” Taylor said. “It’s not being held for inspection because it’s first-class mail.”

Federal regulations generally prohibit inspection of first-class mail, postal service officials confirmed.

But if a package containing quarantined fruit or plant material is damaged or leaking, postal clerks may set it aside for examination by state agricultural commission inspectors, officials said.

“The first interest is that the privacy of first-class mail be protected,” said Joseph Breckenridge, U.S. Postal Service spokesman for the Orange County region. “. . . It is established and protected by law, and that sense that we should have privacy in our mail is rooted deeply in the American tradition.” Taylor said he posted a statewide alert about finding the insect the day after the first one was discovered. “At this point, other areas don’t necessarily need to react,” he said.

Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this story.