If you’re in New York City, New Jersey, or parts of Pennsylvania you’ve probably seen a few of these around: spotted lanternflies. They’re considered to have paninvasive potential, which means they have the following characteristics:
- easily transported
- they’re able to establish themselves just about anywhere
- they have potential to damage economically important crops
Mercifully, they’re a slow moving threat, compared to pandemic viruses. This isn’t meant to minimize the threat in any way.
What’s important to understand about these critters is that their spread is largely because of us humans. They’re plant hoppers, meaning they don’t fly very far. They’d be unable to spread as much as they have without assistance from human technology: automobiles, trains, boats, and planes. That’s not to suggest that we give up travel and commerce. It does demand a certain amount of curiosity and willingness to educate oneself — and a general sense of humility. More on that later.
Currently Pennsylvania has the most experience with them so far. They haven’t quite reached Pennsylvania’s grape crops, but people who understand the situation a lot better than I do are concerned that they’re a threat. Pennsylvania’s Agriculture Department has gone so far as to start requiring commercial vehicles that go in and out of quarantined counties to obtain spotted lanternfly permits, which strikes me as a sensible administrative control. Whether other states follow suit with similar measures will depend on how successful Pennsylvania is compared to neighboring states. Often, natural experiments are the only way to figure out what “treatments” are effective.
In New York, they were first seen on Staten Island. There are several ferries that go between Staten Island and parts of Manhattan, and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island directly to Brooklyn. As a result, they’ve spread to many parts of New York City, although my immediate neighborhood is untouched by them, so far. New York also has a wine industry concentrated mostly in the Finger Lakes, and the concern is that they might make their way there. At this point, New York’s Ag and Markets Department has in some sense “written off” New York City at the moment, and they’re advising us to kill them on sight. I’m going to come back to this.
Outside of New York City, they’re advising people to report sightings to Ag and Markets. They have other suggestions too, like helping New York survey areas for spotted lanternflies and their preferred tree (Tree of Heaven, itself an invasive species). It doesn’t feel as productive as going on squishing them, but it’s infinitely more valuable.
Wherever you are, your state certainly has at least one land grant university and they’ll be on top of this stuff. You can also find your state’s agriculture department. Follow their lead — don’t try to color outside the lines. This includes an important reading comprehension exercise: almost every official website urges us to kill spotted lanternflies when we see them. What they don’t suggest is that you drive out to a spotted lanternfly infested area just to kill the poor things. Not only is that in poor taste — and fundamentally, soul damaging — it’s also likely to be a net bad. It’s on par with “war tourism” and I won’t hesitate to judge you if you do anything like that. As I noted above, they wouldn’t have been able to spread as far as they have without us chauffeuring them. That means that any spotted lanternfly you see outside of Asia probably only exists because of humans. As such, they’re very much conscripts in the army of life, and if you do find the need to send them on to the next world, treat that with the sorrow and solemnity it deserves.