If You See This Beautiful Insect, Please Kill It

[Madam Margolyes 7,783]

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), an invasive pest from Asia, arrived in the U.S. seven years ago and in New York City last year. The insects zealously feed on the sap of more than 70 plant species, leaving them susceptible to disease and destruction from other natural antagonists, threatening to set back the fight against climate change.

They immediately landed on the Most Wanted list of local environmentalists, who have brought a General Patton-ish energy to the project of expunging it. There are no natural predators that go after them and no organic pesticides to shut down their operation, so if you see one, “squish it,” said Ronnit Bendavid-Val, the director of horticulture at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, “that’s the message.”

In Pennsylvania, the issue is taken so seriously that the state issued a Spotted Lanternfly Order of Quarantine and Treatment, which imposes fines and even potential criminal penalties on anyone who intentionally moves the bug, at any stage of its life, from one sort of location to another via “recreational vehicles, tractors, mowers, grills” as well as “tarps, mobile homes, tile, stone, deck boards” or “fire pits.”

New York State’s Department of Agriculture, concerned about the lanternfly’s affinity for grapes and all the resulting danger posed to vineyards in the Finger Lakes and on Long Island, would ask you to go beyond combat and perform reconnaissance. It would like you to collect a specimen when you come across one, put it in a bag and freeze it, or put it in a jar and kill it, then write to the agency providing additional details about your sighting, pointing out the “street address and ZIP code, intersecting roads, landmarks, or GPS coordinates,” according to the website.

The presence of the lanternfly brings us another reminder that our commitments to sustainability are all too frequently in conflict with our aesthetic values. The last time the city faced a threat of this kind was approximately 15 years ago, when the Asian long-horned beetle made its incursions, having entered the country in wooden packing materials. Half of the trees in New York were vulnerable to it, and the invasion resulted in a huge deforestation. First sighted in Brooklyn in 1996, the beetle wasn’t fully eradicated from the city until 23 years later.

Even in the midst of the climate crisis, biodiversity is not taken seriously in a place where nature is generally regarded as a novelty. Researchers are currently working on innovative methods to permanently control the spotted lanternfly population. But once they succeed, of course, something else will inevitably take its place, another tiny enemy escaping its original habitat on a container ship. The pace of global commerce and life makes it impossible to imagine otherwise.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/nyregion/spotted-lanternfly-nyc.html

Saw this on their instagram and the headline caught me off guard 

[Guest]

thank you for posting this. This is a way to also remind everyone that ecosystems are so fragile and that 1°c makesa hudge difference

[Meat 18,962]

Why does it look like Cruella DeVil 

[gumzy3000 7,906]

The wings are giving me major trypophobia honestly... especially the bottom half 

[littlepotter 76,616]

I wish natives did this when colonizers settled into their lands and brought all their diseases and pests 

[Guest]

But why does it exist? is this a new insect

[Oyster 2,458]

This thing is all over philly they’re just everywhere AND SO UGLY THEY ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE CREEPY

[Doily Skull 260]

1 hour ago, KanyeWest said:

But why does it exist? is this a new insect

It’s just new to America, it’s an invasive species already native to Asia.