State to Begin Eradication of Oriental Fruit Flies

State agriculture officials are conducting a program to eradicate Oriental fruit flies that have been found in the area in recent weeks.

The flies were found on Ashtabula and Villa streets, officials said. The insects can lay eggs under the skin of a fruit from which maggots then hatch and destroy the fruit. The Department of Food and Agriculture will set several thousand traps over the next few weeks in an 11-square-mile area of northeast and north-central Pasadena, officials said.

The traps are patches about the size of a silver dollar that will be placed eight to 10 feet up a utility pole.

In a City Council meeting earlier this week, Councilman William Paparian, an opponent of aerial spraying of malathion during the Medfly eradication, said he was concerned about runoff of insecticide from the traps.

But Department of Agriculture spokesman Larry Cooper said the amount of insecticide used is too minimal to cause concern. “The treatment is non-evasive and 100% effective,” Cooper said.

The male fruit flies are drawn to the trap by a chemical attraction tainted with an insecticide that is fatal for them, Cooper said. By killing the male flies, it stops the female flies from reproducing, he said.