State’s lanternfly outbreak has all of US growers worried
On May 22, 2018
AGRICULTURE
State’s lanternfly outbreak has all of US growers worried
ZACH MONTAGUE
NEW YORK TIMES
To most people, the buds and sprouts of April are welcome heralds of spring. But to some farmers and scientists in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, these signs mark the beginning of a long season of dread.
Their worry is Lycorma delicatula, the spotted lanternfly. It is an invasive pest with a voracious appetite and remarkable reproductive talents.
Native to Asia, lanternflies first appeared in Pennsylvania in 2014. Despite a quarantine effort, they have also been discovered in small numbers in New York, Delaware and Virginia.
In their native range, lanternflies feed primarily on one type of tree — Ailanthus, the tree of heaven. The trees are an invasive species, too, common across the continental United States, and so entomologists fear lanternflies one day may spread to far-flung corners of the country.
A nationwide outbreak would be something of a disaster, some scientists
believe. Among the lanternfly’s more alarming qualities is an ability to feed on a huge range of plants, including many of commercial value.
Lanternflies are believed to use at least 40 species of native plants in the United States as hosts. They are particularly fond of grapevines, apple and stone fruit trees as well as a number of hardwood trees, likeblack walnut and maple.
“We’ve seen it in hops, we’ve seen it in some of the grain crops that are out there, soybean and what have you,” said Fred R. Strathmeyer Jr., Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary of agriculture. “It’s able to feed on many, many different things.”
Crops at risk
Lanternflies can easily decimate certain crops in a single season.
“They’ve been appearing in grapes, and we have reports from growers last year of a 90 percent loss,” said Julie Urban, a senior research associate at Penn State University.
Then there is the lanternfly’s unusual ability to lay eggs on almost any surface.
While other species tend to deposit eggs on a living plant or in soil nearby, lanternflies can place a bundle of eggs nearly anywhere — wheel wells, train cars, shipping containers.
Agricultural inspectors in Pennsylvania have even started checking beehives for lanternfly eggs.
To try to contain lanternflies, regulators have set up a quarantine zone in Pennsylvania that now spans over 3,000 square miles (up from 174 in 2016) and includes 13 counties, as well as Philadelphia.
The state prohibits the moving of certain items within the zone, including firewood, outdoor furniture and construction debris. Officials also have launched a permit program for companies shipping goods out of the area.
“It’s not just an agriculture problem, this is truly an across-the-board commerce problem, because we are trying not to move it,” said Strathmeyer. “This is everyday people, this is the trucking company, the UPS driver, the delivery guy.”
In February, the federal
Agriculture Department stepped in as well, setting aside $17.5 million in emergency funding to finance research and help the quarantine effort.
Many scientists who have studied lanternflies fear that the pace at which populations have grown so far suggests anuphill battle ahead.
The spotted Lanternfly is indigenous to China, India, Japan and Vietnam, but it has been found in Berks County.