I also remember seeing something in Popular Science, back in the early 1960s, about the Department of Agriculture using nuclear radiation to sterilize millions of screwworm flies, who were then let go into the wild, I think in Texas.
They were supposed to mate and be duds, thereby driving down the screwworm population.
I read that when I was seven or eight. My father brought me a stack of Popular Science mags that a co-worker gave him, to give to his science-crazed little boy.
The lab which did the research, and produced the irradiated flies was in Kerrville, TX. It was not a huge facility. I guess you can raise millions of screw worms in a modest facility. They would drop boxes of the sterile male flies across Texas, successfully eradicating screw worms in Tx.
That was about the time I was given National Geographics by my parents to read but I couldn’t get past those topless African women...
I remember that also. I think they do that with mosquitos too.