Medfly Fight May Depend on Weather : Agriculture: Officials plan to rely on ground application of malathion and see if winter slows the pests’ infestation. One adviser is calling for aerial spraying now.

Cross your fingers and hope for a cold, nasty winter. That is the message from officials battling the latest infestation of the Mediterranean fruit fly in Southern California.

Cold weather slows the wily subtropical pest, making it more susceptible to predators, and deprives it of its favorite warm-weather hosts.

It could also provide nervous agricultural officials with a welcome excuse to put off a decision about the controversial aerial spraying of malathion.

“If we can just get into the winter, then we can take stock of the situation and have some time to get prepared,” said entomologist James Carey of the state Medfly Science Advisory Panel. “In the winter they still hang around, but there is a quiescence.”

Agricultural officials, on the advice of the science panel, have been battling the four-week outbreak from the ground. State crews with hand-held sprayers began a second round of malathion bait application last week in the Country Club Park neighborhood near Koreatown. A third spraying is expected soon.

Officials hope that the limited ground campaign will contain the infestation until winter. But with the number of trapped flies now at seven--six have been found in the Country Club Park area and one in the city of San Gabriel--the consensus to keep the fleet of malathion-spewing helicopters grounded has begun to erode.

For the first time since the infestation was detected Oct. 7, a member of the science advisory panel has broken ranks with his colleagues on the politically explosive issue. Meanwhile, the state’s powerful agricultural industry has grown increasingly restive as additional Medflies have been trapped. But the state’s low-key eradication program remains unchanged.

“We are kidding ourselves if we think winter is going to stop the Medfly,” said Michael Durando, president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, a trade association whose members gross $1 billion annually from crops that could be at risk from the pest. “They should start a more aggressive eradication program. I don’t think we have seen the last of the Medfly.”

State agricultural officials have been reluctant to return the helicopters to the air because of the public uproar over an extensive air campaign during the last Medfly infestation in 1989-90. Officials insist that the current outbreak has been controlled--so far--and a ground campaign of periodic spraying, intensive trapping and fruit stripping has done the job.

“We are being very cautious,” said Leon Spaugy, Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner.

But entomologist Richard Rice, a member of the science advisory panel from UC Davis, recently warned local, state and federal agricultural officials that the strategy has been overly cautious. Rice recommended an eradication program involving aerial spraying followed by the release of millions of sterile Medflies to breed the pests out of existence.

“We shouldn’t let this thing go unchecked through the entire winter period,” Rice said in an interview. “This provides just too much of an opportunity for the infestation to expand.”

The four other members of the science panel rejected Rice’s argument, as did the agricultural officials. Rice’s dissent marked the first fracture in a common front state officials have struggled to portray in their assault on the Medfly.

Since the discovery of the first fly, agricultural officials have only reluctantly acknowledged that political considerations played a role in the decision to fight the infestation from the ground. Instead, they have emphasized the unanimous backing for a ground strategy among their scientific advisers.

With Rice’s dissent, the door to second-guessing the approach has been cracked opened, and proponents of aerial spraying have come knocking.

“There are a lot of eyebrows being raised,” said Richard Matoian, chairman of the Exotic Fruit Fly Coalition, a collection of 20 agricultural trade associations concerned about the impact of the Medfly infestation on farmers. “I think there are political concerns at work here. I don’t think the state wants to get into another battle with the public and environmentalists.”

Matoian and others in the farming industry said they are concerned that state officials have ignored the so-called Medfly protocol, a set of guidelines for eradicating the pest established during the last infestation. If the protocol had been followed, aerial spraying of malathion would have been triggered more than three weeks ago.

“You start to wonder what is beginning to play here,” said Durando, the grape and tree fruit league president. “Our members are very concerned. We are aware of no research or research developments that justify any major revision of that protocol.”

State officials say they understand farmers’ concerns, but insist that the protocol was never intended as a rigid battle plan for every Medfly infestation. Carl DeWing, spokesman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture, said the current infestation, which so far is smaller numerically and geographically than the 1989-90 outbreak, requires a different approach.

“Last year’s protocol really doesn’t fit this year’s situation,” DeWing said. “We feel we are taking the correct approach. Unless we get other Medflies popping up in other areas, we still feel this is a small infestation.”

Farmers are not the only ones complaining about the state’s strategy. Even with the helicopters grounded, opponents of aerial spraying have begun to organize. Action Now, an anti-pesticide group that formed during the last infestation, held a community meeting last week near the Country Club Park neighborhood, and leaders said there will be more.

“Our children were poisoned from aerial spraying last time, and we will never be expected to allow that again,” said Noel Otten, the group’s president.

State Sen. Art Torres, an outspoken opponent of aerial spraying, also entered the fray last week, writing a letter urging Gov. Pete Wilson to adopt a “no-spray” program.

“These are pesky little flies that are part of the environment now,” Torres said in an interview. “These animals are not going to go away. It is like Westmoreland thinking he could beat the (North) Vietnamese by bombing them. Guess what? They went into tunnels and other areas and beat us in the Vietnam War.”

A spokesman for Wilson said the governor has pledged to follow the advice of the science advisory panel and not allow “emotion or politics” to dictate the eradication strategy.

“Should the situation arise where the state needs to contemplate further spraying, then the governor would base his decision on science,” said spokesman Franz Wisner. “Up to this point, he has not had to make that decision.”