The codling moth has been in the Okanagan Valley for about 80 years. It is thought that the codling moth was brought to Canada from Europe. In the 1920s, there were very few codling moths in the Okanagan, and the orchardists and the government wanted it to stay that way. The government was so concerned about the spread of the codling moth that government workers would go from orchard to orchard spraying all the apple trees. In those days, the spray was made from arsenic of lead, which is now known to be poisonous to both animals and humans. Art Rogers remembers that just after he and his family arrived in Kelowna, there was a government reward available to anyone who found a codling moth grub or chrysalis. But unfortunately, the codling moth gained a foothold in the Okanagan Valley. By the 1930s, Art remembers finding up to 6,000 codling moth chrysalises in just one sweep of the orchard! Every year orchardists spend a great deal of money spraying their trees to kill the codling moths as well as other pests.

The government has now introduced the Sterile Insect Release (SIR) program to try to eliminate the codling moth. In the SIR program, scientists irradiate codling moths to make them infertile. The moths are then released to breed with other moths. But the infertile moths cannot reproduce, so there are no offspring, and the number of moths decrease. The SIR program has had some success in the South and Central Okanagan Valley. In the Osoyoos-Oliver area, over 95 percent of the orchards had no codling moth damage in 2000. However, the codling moth has not yet been exterminated completely, so orchardists must continue spraying to kill the moths in their trees.