3rd apple moth found in county

<p>A third light brown apple moth has been found in southeastern Sonoma County, this one about seven miles from the moth quarantine area in the Sonoma Valley.</p><p>State agriculture officials confirmed Friday the discovery a day earlier off Ramal Road southeast of Sonoma and near the Napa county line, county officials said. The discovery means another section of the county will fall under closer scrutiny for a pest that has caused heated controversy over how best to eradicate it.</p><p>"It's certainly not good news," said Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission.</p><p>The state now will place more insect traps around the Ramal Road area. The detection of a second moth in the vicinity would trigger a quarantine as occurred this spring in the Sonoma Valley.</p><p>County Agriculture Commissioner Lisa Correia said the county will begin contacting nearby growers and will make plans to lessen any impact on the grape harvest now under way.</p><p>"We don't want to wait until we find a second one," Correia said.</p><p>Correia and other county officials noted that their inspectors have been working in the quarantine area to declare vineyards there free of the moths so that growers can transport grapes to outside wineries.</p><p>The apple moth's existence in California was confirmed in early 2007. The insect, a native of Australia, has since been found in most Bay Area counties and south to Monterey.</p><p>The state, which maintains that the moth could do considerable damage to numerous crops and the environment, conducted aerial spraying last year over Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. Plans to repeat aerial spraying this year created an outcry around the Bay Area. In June, the state announced it will begin raising and eventually releasing millions of sterile moths in the infested areas rather than resume aerial spraying.</p><p>The Sonoma Valley moths were found in February and April, resulting in a 15-square-mile quarantine area from southwestern Sonoma north to Eldridge. The state prohibits residents from removing plants from the area, and it requires growers and other commercial operations to show that they won't spread the pest by transporting crops to market.</p><p>Friday's news of the latest moth discovery came a few hours after the state had announced plans to put on hold its long-delayed efforts to use special twist ties in the two Sonoma Valley neighborhoods where the two apple moths were discovered earlier this year. Despite assurance by health officials, many residents in the two neighborhoods had voiced fears about chemicals on the ties that are used to disrupt the moth's mating cycle.</p><p>Instead of using the twist ties, the state will simply keep using traps to search for the moth in the entire quarantine area. If no more moths are found there by early October, the quarantine would cease "without ever applying twist ties," said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.</p><p>State officials said they must make sure an area is free of the moth for three life cycles, each of which can vary from two to almost five months depending on the climate. Warm weather speeds up the life cycle.</p><p>County officials noted that nearly four months have elapsed since the last moth was found in the quarantine area, raising the likelihood that no more would be detected before the estimated third life cycle ends in late September. Normally the state would have ended the use of the twist ties by this point in the third life cycle, Lyle said. This week's discovery of a third moth was outside the quarantine area.</p><p>The twist-tie announcement was happily received by county Supervisor Valerie Brown, who represents the Sonoma Valley. The decision "should relieve the anxiety of a lot of folks in the area," Brown said.</p><p>Gina Paisley, a resident in the proposed twist-tie area, said she was pleased by the state news, though she insisted "they wouldn't have been putting them in my yard regardless."</p><p>Paisley also expressed hope that no more moths would turn up to trouble the county's farmers, a hope that was frustrated a few hours later.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285</p><p>or robert.digitale@</p><p>pressdemocrat.com.</p>