FLY FIND WORRIES OLIVE GROWERS; DISCOVERY IN WESTWOOD COULD BUG $100 MILLION INDUSTRY.

Byline: Robert Jablon Associated Press 

A small, drab hitchhiker is threatening California's $100 million olive industry.

The olive fruit fly, a brown-bodied, black-banded speck long known in the Mediterranean, has made its first appearance in the United States and possibly all of North America, state agriculture officials say.

Growers like Cliff Graber, president of Ontario-based C.C. Graber Co., say they support ``anything that it takes'' to prevent the fly from gaining a foothold in California.

``That infestation would pretty much ruin us,'' he said.

The eradication effort could cost $1 million, said Oscar Hidalgo, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento.

California is the only state that grows olives on a large commercial basis. The business represents only a small part of the state's $27.8 billion annual agricultural economy, but last year that amounted to $66.8 million, $100 million the year before.

The olive fruit fly larvae can cause olives to drop prematurely, diminishing the quality of the oil, and their tunneling makes ``pretty ugly'' fruit that is unsuitable for canning, which is where the bulk of California's olives go, said Jan Nelson, manager of the California Olive Committee, the Fresno-based organization that handles federal marketing orders for the industry.

There are other sources for olives, including about 400 acres in Arizona and crops in Mexico that are processed in California, but they wouldn't make up for the state's losses, she added.

As with other agricultural pests, the olive fruit fly made its appearance hundreds of miles from farmland. Thirty adult flies and seven larvae have been found since the first one was discovered Oct. 19. All were in Westwood.

The unique fly was found in a trap routinely checked for pests, but it took an entomologist at a state lab to identify it, Hidalgo said.

``We're frankly surprised to find it in California,'' he said.

The flies probably came from raw olives illegally brought into the United States.

``It could have been mailed in, it could have been brought in by an international traveler,'' Hidalgo said.

A 58-square-mile quarantine zone was established. Anyone removing homegrown olives from the area could face up to $25,000 in fines, Hidalgo said.

There are more than 50 olive trees in the area, most used for landscaping.

Of those, 22 are at the Los Angeles Mormon Temple, where stately rows of the gnarled, shaggy trees sport twinkling white Christmas lights - and now at least one yellow sticky trap festooned with dead bugs.

Originally planted for their biblical reference, the trees are nearly half a century old.

Commercial groves are hundreds of miles away in the San Joaquin Valley and Northern California but that wouldn't stop a determined fly, Hidalgo said.

``They probably hitchhiked from Europe to here. There's no reason to indicate that they can't hitchhike another 80 miles, 100 miles, 400 miles,'' Hidalgo said. ``We cannot let down our guard here.''

Agriculture officials stripped some Westwood trees of fruit and sprayed in and around others with two kinds of pesticide. Another spraying was set for next week.

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PHOTO Nine olive fruit flies found in the Westwood area have put local and state officials on alert.

Associated Press