An additional 95 traps will be set around Auckland this week by the Ministry of Primary Industries following the discovery of a single male Tau fly on Thursday.
"We are working to find out if there are more flies out there, Brendan Gould, MPI's manager of surveillance and incursion investigation, said. "Within 48 hours of the detection our teams will have set out 95 additional traps in the A Zone, the 200m area directly around where the fly was found in Manurewa."
The find of the single fly demonstrates how well MPI's lure-based surveillance trapping network is working, Mr Gould believed. The network involves about 7,600 traps set nationwide which are checked regularly.
Controls are now in place to restrict the movement of some fruit and vegetables outside of a defined circular area extending 1.5km from where the fly was trapped.
"These flies like to feed on pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, capsicum, zucchini, beans, mangoes, eggplant, papaya and passionfruit," Mr Gould said. "A full list of affected fruit and vegetables is available on MPI's website.
