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Three-square miles in Carneros will be the site of the United States Department of Agriculture's Sterile Insect Technique pilot program to eradicate the light brown apple moth, an invasive pest that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) contends is capable of causing billions of dollars in agricultural damage.

Beginning sometime this month, USDA plans to release thousands of sterilized moths over a stretch of private agricultural land, mostly vineyards, on Ramal Road along the border of Sonoma and Napa counties. The strategy behind the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is to overwhelm the area with sterilized moths, with which the wild female moths will mate while they won't be able to produce offspring, thus controlling the population expansion. USDA is hoping to determine if the program could be used over a larger area in an effort to eradicate the moth that has been detected in 18 counties across California. "Results from this evaluation project will provide data necessary to determine if a larger scale, sterile-insect control program is feasible," said USDA spokeswoman Jessica Milteer, adding that USDA will also use the opportunity to study the moth about which very little is known. The first LBAMs in California were only detected in 2007.

"During the pilot project, several different characteristics of moth performance and sterile-insect-handling methods will be evaluated, including moth dispersal, longevity, recapture rates on monitoring traps, mating frequency, release frequency and release methodology," said Milteer. For months, thousands of moths have been reared at a specialized facility in Moss Landing. Scientists say they have determined the specific level of radiation that will ensure the moths are sterile while still allowing them to mate with wild moths. USDA scientists say the moths are not radioactive and not a danger to the ecosystem.

"I find the implementation of the proposed program will not significantly impact the quality of the human environment," wrote APHIS representative Osama El Lissy in his report on the environmental assessment on the pilot program.

Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for USDA, said his office is waiting for a final permit necessary to allow the release, as well as for better weather before the program will get under way. The plan calls for releasing 1,400 moths an acre a week between October and November, which the USDA report stated "should not" harm the native insect population. "The addition of 1,400 sterile moths per acre will not be likely to cause any adverse environmental impacts. Insects present in agricultural systems are measured in numbers or in biomass. A typical agricultural field contains 400 million insects per acre ... The addition of 1,400 moths per acre per week will not affect total insect numbers or insect biomass in the agricultural field because it represents a small fraction of the total insect numbers and biomass," Hawkins said. "APHIS assessed the SIT-evaluation-project area for the potential impacts on federally listed threatened and endangered species and critical habitats and has completed that assessment with agreement from both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service," he added.

According to the environmental assessment for the pilot program, SIT has been successfully used to "control or eradicate" numerous invasive species around the world, including the tsetse fly and the fruit fly. But some in the scientific community have said SIT is not going to eradicate the moths. Dr. James Carey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, has been an outspoken critic of USDA and the California Department of Food and Agriculture's handling of the light brown apple moth and said the SIT program has no chance for success and is a drain on taxpayer dollars.

"This technology is simply not going to work," Carey said. "They get some decrease in population and they call it eradicated. That is not eradication, it's simply control. Eradication is ridding the entire state of every single moth. That's just not going to happen."

He said USDA has spent $950,000 on leasing, equipping and staffing the rearing facility at Moss Landing. Milteer said another $10,000 would be spent releasing and monitoring the moths in Carneros.

"It's just a monumental waste of money. There's no way this could work, period," Carey said.

Carey said there is one case where SIT successfully eradicated a pest when it was used on the screw-worm fly in the 1960s. Following that, USDA attempted unsuccessfully to use the technology on a wide variety of pests from insects to rodents.

"It doesn't work on the vast majority of insects," Carey added.

USDA said SIT was selected as the preferred method for combating the light brown apple moth. When the pest was first detected in 2007, CDFA used an aerial pheromone spray designed to disrupt mating behavior over Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. CDFA said the spray was safe to humans and animals, but more than 600 individuals sought medical aid from respiratory ailments following exposure to the spray, sparking intense public outrage.

Since then, USDA and CDFA have been searching for an environmentally friendly way to combat the moth, including the use of pheromone twist ties, parasitic wasps and SIT. USDA said if no action is taken, private individuals would increase pesticide use to combat the moth.

"The public loves SIT because it doesn't use pesticides. Well the problem is it doesn't work," Carey said, adding that he doesn't believe the moth is capable of the damage USDA claims is possible.

Critics, including scientists like Carey, farmers and several elected officials, including Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, have petitioned APHIS to reclassify the moth as a non-actionable pest, meaning eradication efforts would cease. Last month the National Academies of Science released a report criticizing APHIS for a "lack of robust science" when classifying the pest, but added the organization was within its authority to classify the moth as an actionable quarantine-significant pest. APHIS said it would update its response to the petition in the coming months to address the concerns raised by the National Academies of Science.

Following the pilot program this month, the SIT program will be repeated several times and scientists will monitor any changes in population to see if the program could be effectively used on a larger geographic area.

Since the moths were first detected in the Valley in February 2008, agricultural growers and nurseries have been put under strict quarantine that requires them to have their products checked before they can be moved out of the quarantined area.

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