Millions of fruit flies are being dropped from planes onto Los Angeles residents.

If you are in Los Angeles (California) and look up, then there is a chance to see this spectacle: small twin-engine planes circle over the city throwing out hundreds of thousands of insects marked with a unique purple dye. And although it may seem unusual, such an air show will soon become a familiar sight. SFGate told what’s going on.

Earlier this month, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) quarantined 69 square miles (178.7 sq km) of Los Angeles County after finding two wild Mediterranean fruit flies in the home of a Leimert Park resident – area in south Los Angeles. The lockdown covers Hyde Park as well as parts of Culver City and Inglewood, maps show, and is just one of many lockdowns imposed across California over the past year. The state continues to wage war on invasive species.

Those living within this boundary are advised to store home-grown fruit and vegetables on their property and double bag them before throwing them in the trash. CDFA staff plans to spray nearby homes with spinosad, a natural pesticide derived from soil bacteria.

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Although the invasive copperhead fly is only a quarter inch (0.6 cm) long, it poses an existential threat to California’s multibillion-dollar agricultural industry, capable of destroying 300 species of fruits, nuts and vegetables.

However, the greatest damage is caused not by adult flies, but by their young. When a female fly lays eggs inside a fruit, they hatch into larvae that tunnel into the fruit and turn the fruit into a rotten mass. If the fly population gets out of control, it could cost the state up to $1.8 billion a year.

Now local authorities are preparing for the next stage of the fight. Only this time it will take place in the air.

Jay Van Rijn, a CDFA spokesman, said the agency plans to release 250,000 sterile male fruit flies per square mile per week in a 9-square-mile area. miles near the site of infection. It may take six months or even more to completely destroy the population.

Ken Pellman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Agriculture, said the beetles, marked with a special purple dye, are first collected at a military base in Los Alamitos and then loaded onto a plane. When the plane takes off, he said, “they are simply released from the bottom of the cabin – it’s a pretty interesting operation.”

While this method sounds alarming, it has been used to kill invasive insects for decades and has previously helped control other pests such as the Mexican fruit fly and pink moth. The preventative release program, or PRP, is a form of biological birth control that has been in use since 1996, Van Rijn said.

“Mating sterile male flies with wild female flies results in infertile eggs,” he explained.

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Before this method was implemented, California dealt with hoverfly infestations nearly eight times a year by resorting to such costly and controversial methods as aerial spraying of pesticides.

Although it’s unclear how the flies got to Southern California. Pellman suspects they were introduced through untested products – a common culprit in these increasingly common scenarios.

“We don’t want this fly to become established and multiply and spread into commercial agricultural areas,” Pellman said. “Then it will become a big problem.”

California residents who believe their produce is contaminated can call the state’s pest hotline at 800-491-1899 or email [email protected].

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