Medfly Find Triggers Big Trap Project

A single male Mediterranean fruit fly has been trapped in a West Los Angeles neighborhood, setting off a massive trapping effort over an 81-square-mile area, county officials reported Tuesday.

Agricultural Commissioner Paul Engler said the Medfly was the first detected in Los Angeles County since another male insect was trapped in Beverly Hills in November, 1984.

Engler said there is no immediate cause for alarm. But as a precautionary measure, 1,349 traps were set out over the weekend. They will be checked on a daily basis.

The pesky fruit fly was thought to have been all but eradicated in California after a massive ground and air war was launched against the insect in 1981 and 1982. The decision on whether to spray thousands of square miles to kill the destructive pest was a major controversy in the Administration of then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Poses Serious Threat

Don Henry of the state Department of Agriculture said the Medfly poses a serious threat to a variety of fruits and vegetables. The female of the species lays eggs just below the surface of fruit and the fly’s maggots feed on the inside, destroying the fruit or vegetable in the process.

At the height of the Medfly crisis five years ago, several hundred of the pests were trapped in Northern California. Most of those, however, were discovered in urban areas.

Los Angeles County has not had a major problem with the fruit fly, although the first one discovered in the United States was trapped in West Los Angeles in 1975. Several found in a Baldwin Park neighborhood in 1981 led to an apparently successful aerial eradication effort, but new Medflies were trapped a year later in Hancock Park and again in Beverly Hills two years later.

In all, about 55 Medflies have been discovered in Los Angeles County over the last decade, agricultural officials said.

The latest Medfly was discovered last Thursday in an orange tree at a residence on Corinth Avenue near Interstate 405 and Olympic Boulevard. The specimen was taken to Sacramento, where it was confirmed that it indeed was the Mediterranean fruit fly, Engler said. The last Medfly trapped in California was found last August in San Diego.

The boundaries of the trapping effort launched over the weekend are the Pacific Ocean, the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains on the north, La Brea Avenue on the east and Jefferson and Centinela boulevards on the south.