A spotted lantern fly crawls along the dirt at PNC Park during a baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Washington Nationals, Friday, Sept. 10, 2021, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Lycoming County is facing a different type of quarantine from the one folks have grown weary of over the past two years — now, the region has been added to the growing list of counties under quarantine in a bid to stop the spread of the invasive spotted lanternfly.
The inclusion of the county places the burden on everyone — residents and businesses — to keep the destructive species from attacking plants such as grapevines and maple and black walnut trees.
“They’re known to really attack orchards and our grape production could be at risk in Pennsylvania,” Sydney Moore, a plant inspector with the state’s Department of Agriculture, told the Lycoming County Commissioners at a recent meeting.
“Pennsylvania has a lot of agricultural commodities that are really important for the United States and the world. We’re the fifth largest producer of wine grapes. We’re the third largest producer of juice grapes, the fourth largest producer of apples and the fifth largest producer of peaches, all of which can be affected by the spotted lanternfly,” Moore explained.
Other agricultural commodities that could be affected include the nursery industry as well as logging and foresting.
The spotted lanternfly was first discovered in the state in Berks County in 2014.
“It is not an invasive species in China, Bangladesh, countries like that. It has a natural balance in the ecosystem over there,” Moore said.
“It’s native in Asia, but it’s unchecked over here because it doesn’t have any real natural predators,” she added.
Since its introduction into the state, the spotted lanternfly has spread to the point that more half the counties are considered infested. Lycoming County is just the last to be added to the list of counties where precautions must be taken to check the spread.
The flies are about an inch long and half an inch wide.
“Most of the time you see this bug, its wings are tucked up onto its back. You’re not going to see it with its wings flared out with that pretty red wing pattern that everybody likes to show in the media,” Moore said.
“It is a leafhopper. So, most of the time it’s tucked up, and it bounces around,” she added.
It feeds through a proboscis, a straw-like mouthpart, which probes a tree and sucks up its nutrients.
“It is important to know that it does not bite or sting people,” Moore said.
“They swarm on the south side of a house when it’s warm. In highly infested areas, it can be really alarming when there’s a lot of spotted lanternflies because they’re quite a nuisance. They can also feed in swarms,” she added.
The first quarantine was issued in 2014, and it was by township to township. This eventually changed to county by county.
“The people that are affected by a quarantine is everybody. So, even if you’re a resident, you’re affected,” Moore said.
The state’s Department of Agriculture has a checklist for residents on its website in order to keep the infestation from spreading.
It includes such things as checking a car’s bumpers and wheel wells as well as under and inside the vehicle and the windshield wiper area for any of the life stages of the lanternfly before leaving an area. You should also check yourself.
An extensive list of recreational and camping items, children’s playthings, outdoor household items, building materials and yard and garden items are included in the checklist.
“If you’re moving from a quarantine area to a place that does not have any spotted lanternfly, you should be checking to make sure you’re not moving any life stage of the fly around,” Moore said.
“They’re not very good at moving on their own. We are the ones who are moving them,” she stressed.
“I don’t want to target any one pathway, but there’s many pathways for movement and it’s a human-assisted thing that’s making it move,” she added.
The surest way to get rid of the pests is to scrape them away.
Search for eggs and then scrape the egg mass into a bag or container. Destroy the eggs by covering them in hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol, smash them or burn them.
Spotted lanternfly permits are mandatory for businesses that move items within and out of a quarantine zone, according to information from the Department of Agriculture.
In order to determine if a business needs a permit, there is a permit test that can be taken through the Penn State Extension. There is no cost to obtain a permit.
The first thing that needs to be done is to assign a trainer who will then take a train the trainer course.
“That person will go through the Penn State training. They will learn all about the spotted lanternfly. They will learn what the requirements of the quarantine are and then they will relay that information to their employees,” Moore said.
“The permit training allows you to continue to do your business as long as you’re following the stipulations of the quarantine,” she said.
Once the permit training is completed a business will be supplied with a permit which can come in many forms. There is an official certificate which can be printed and distributed to all vehicles in a company because the Department of Agriculture is occasionally doing stop checks, Moore explained.
“We work with the state police to stop vehicles and do inspections to make sure that businesses that are moving within or out of the quarantine zone have this permit available,” she said.
When asked if there were any plans to introduce a species to counteract the lanternfly, Moore stated that there are some predators in Asia which are native to that ecosystem.
“But, the problem with introducing something like that into the U.S. is it can cause just as many problems as the spotted lanternfly is causing,” she said.
“So, right now the tools that we have in our tool belt are to make sure we spread this education. Make sure that people know about spotted lanternfly and they’re not just moving things around without checking for it,” she stated.
“The biggest thing that the quarantine provides is time for researchers to develop tools to put in the tool belt to fight spotted lanternfly, to figure out what controls work the best chemically and to figure out whether there’s physical exclusion barriers that could perhaps work,” she added.
For details about the permitting process and ways to prevent the spread of these invaders, visit the state’s Department of Agriculture website: https://www.agriculture.pa.gov.
Source: news.google.com
