PA Department of Agriculture seeks public help in spotted lanternfly crisis
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the spotted lanternfly is a planthopper that’s native to east Asia. It was first discovered in PA in Berks County in 2014. Since then, it’s wreaked havoc on the local environment as well as the economy. An economic impact study conducted by the state in 2019 estimated that, uncontrolled, the spotted lanternfly could have cost the state $324 million annually and impacted thousands of jobs. But efforts have been made in order to stop the spread and to try to learn more about them.
“There’s no pattern that our folks out in the field have been able to discern other than they tend to peak in the third year that they’re in," said Shannon Powers, Press Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
Powers explains that the lanternflies have become so widespread partly due to people unknowingly transporting them.
“Know what they look like and make sure that you’re not taking them on your vehicle, on your windshield," said Powers. "Make sure you’re not taking them on your belongings when you go camping or hiking. Check your car, you wheel wells, your windshield. If you’re visiting a place that has a lot of insects, just don’t take them to your home if you don’t have them yet.”
The state has encouraged people across the commonwealth to kill the flies as soon as they’re spotted, mostly by squashing them, but as research continued, chemical products became available.
“Lantern flies are an invasive species," said Powers. "They don’t belong here. We’ve had to do a lot of research to see how they would behave in this new environment and research on products that will be effective to control them. So, we’ve had them for long enough that there are products now labeled for spotted lanternflies.”
The 2023 PA state budget also addresses the issue of the spotted lanternfly. It allocated 3 million dollars to manage the lanternfly population.
“There are a lot of lanternflies still in Pittsburgh, in Allegheny County and some of those places where they arrived a little later, they haven’t yet hit their peak and moved on," said Powers. "We haven’t figured out why they do that but there are still plenty of places where lantern flies are thick If you’re in an area that hasn’t seen them before, we want to know that you have lanternflies so that we can send someone out to help and control them."
If you see a spotted lanternfly, squash it and report it to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
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