{"id":27586,"date":"2019-12-17T09:25:41","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T14:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/?p=27586"},"modified":"2019-12-17T09:25:41","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T14:25:41","slug":"animals-government-breeds-releases-billions-flies-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/animals-government-breeds-releases-billions-flies-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Animals Why the government breeds and releases billions of flies a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Key deer, an endangered species in the Florida Keys, suffered a painful and potentially lethal outbreak of parasitic screwworms in 2016. A U.S.-Panamanian program that breeds and sterilizes screwworm flies saved them.<\/p>\n

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A program in Panama breeds, sterilizes, and releases 20 million screwworm flies a week to protect livestock from flesh-eating larvae. This is how it works.<\/p>\n

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Just east of<\/span> the Panama Canal, tucked between patches of rainforest, farmers\u2019 fields, and the Pacora River, there’s a green-roofed building that looks like any other factory facility on Earth. Except inside this building, which is jointly operated by the Panamanian and United States governments, they breed flies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Millions of flies a week. More than a billion a year. Inside, the air smells faintly of rotting meat, as the fly larvae dine on a carefully honed diet of milk, eggs, fiber, and cow blood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a9 NGP, Content may not reflect National Geographic’s current map policy<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The U.S. and Panamanian governments release millions of sterile screwworm flies over Panama’s Dari\u00e9n Gap every week to stop the species from moving north.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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These aren\u2019t your usual houseflies, however. These are highly destructive New World screwworm flies, also known as cattle borers. And to combat them, scientists systematically expose their pupae to radiation in the lab to render them sterile before they\u2019re released en masse above the wilds of Central America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This elaborate\u2014if somewhat disgusting\u2014operation maintains a little known but hugely important invisible barrier. It\u2019s part of a decades-long effort to protect livestock throughout North and Central America by keeping screwworm flies and their flesh-eating, parasitic larvae south of Panama. Native to the Americas, New World screwworms were eradicated from the U.S. in 1966 and are kept at bay by the Panama-U.S. Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of the Cattle Borer Worm (COPEG), using a technique that also helps protect strawberries, coffee beans, and cotton\u2014among other things\u2014from pests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The shiny blue screwworm fly lays its eggs in the open wounds of warm-blooded animals, so its larvae have something to eat. About two to three times the size of a common housefly, these parasites especially love livestock. During the first half of the 20th<\/sup> century, screwworm larvae cost the industry some $20 million annually<\/a>, in addition to causing cows, pigs, and other livestock excruciating pain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Screwworms, the flesh-eating larvae of the New World screwworm fly, were eradicated in the U.S. in 1966, but occasional outbreaks still occur.<\/p>\n

Photograph by Science History Images, Alamy <\/small><\/div>\n

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\u201cThey can lay their eggs in a wound as tiny as a tick bite,\u201d says Vanessa Dellis<\/a>, general director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s Screwworm Program. A screwworm infestation can be lethal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fortunately, scientists have found a way to thwart the parasites: Regular releases of millions of irradiated, sterile flies every week has managed to eradicate them from the U.S. all the way down through Central America. Now, 25 years after the U.S. and Panama first partnered on this fly-breeding and -irradiating venture,<\/a> it\u2019s clear the program has been a success, keeping both humans and animals free of the ravenous parasites.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fighting flies with flies<\/b><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe flies have a unique biology,\u201d says Pamela Phillips<\/a>, technical director of the USDA\u2019s Screwworm Program. Females only mate once in their three-week lifespan, so if the male they mate with is sterile, there will be no new screwworm larvae. Saturating an area with sterile males will eventually lead to the fly\u2019s demise. It\u2019s known as the \u201csterile insect technique\u201d and also has been used to address human health concerns, such eradicating tsetse flies, which transmit sleeping sickness to humans, from Unguja Island in Zanzibar<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By exploiting this biological weakness of the screwworm fly, the U.S. government was able to eradicate screwworms in the country in 1966. Using the sterile insect technique to control screwworms has been one of the most successful entomological success stories of all time, according to the USDA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After the USDA program managed to wipe out fertile screwworms in the mainland U.S., they bugs were pushed further and further south. By 1991, Mexico was free of the New World screwworm. The insect\u2019s strongholds in Belize and Guatemala fell next, then El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In 2002, Panama slammed the door closed on the continent. The screwworm barrier now lies on the doorstep to Colombia, where screwworms still occur.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have a lot of pride to have this program here in Panama,\u201d says Enrique Samudio<\/a>, general director for the Panamanian Ministry of Agriculture side of COPEG. \u201cIt\u2019s unique in the whole world.\u201d To maintain this progress against the screwworm however, scientists must annually release billions of irradiated males, overwhelming the wild, fertile male screwworm supply that could mate with the available females. The sterile, good-guy flies are released by airplane to the tune of six flights over Panama\u2019s southeastern Dari\u00e9n region every week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sometimes, however, there are still outbreaks. <\/b>Global trade can lead to screwworm stowaways, so the COPEG facility has to stand ready to disburse emergency supplies of sterile flies whenever necessary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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