Fighting Invasive Species with ...More of Them?

The Mediterranean fruit fly is an invasive species that have done intolerable damage to crops in California.  So why is the USDA breeding more of them and releasing them? It's for competition. The medflies from the labs are treated to make them sterile, and then released to mate with wild medflies which will produce no offspring. It's not as quick or thorough as spraying pesticides, but it's certainly a lot safer for people, crops, and the environment as a whole. The process of growing, sterilizing, transporting, and releasing these flies is quite complicated, as Tom Scott shows us. Then they have to be monitored, which is only possible because they've also been marked. Another thing I learned: ginger root oil helps male flies become more successful at mating. How long until someone bottles that for sale? Oh, it's already happening? I'm not surprised.