Spotted Lanternflies Are Spreading Across Massachusetts. 

What Should Residents Do?

By-Hank Stolz
Photos: mass.gov

Questions, Concerns, Opinions?

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Worcester, MA- The spotted lanternfly has rapidly spread across Massachusetts and is raising serious concerns among residents, tree care professionals, and agricultural industries. In this community conversation, arborist Michael Rosenbusch, arborist, with SavATree explains that while the pest is not as destructive as the Asian longhorned beetle, it poses a significant and long-term nuisance to the landscape.

Rosenbusch told Hank Stolz how the lantern fly ended up in MA, “They’re imported from Southeast Asia. They’re native to Vietnam and China. And like a lot of invasive species, they come over via shipping lanes… Spotted lanternfly comes over as egg masses… they will lay their eggs anywhere. They’ll lay them on shipping pallets, on masonry, on wood, on playgrounds, on the bumpers of trucks.”  “At some point, somewhere around 2014, probably a shipping pallet, a spotted lanternfly laid some eggs on it and it was shipped across the world… It landed in Pennsylvania, first in Massachusetts in about 2021.” He explained what happened next, “You take these creatures; you’ve moved them halfway across the world, and you’ve taken them away from all their predators, all their diseases, all the things that would keep the populations in check. And you bring them in here and they go hog wild.”

Hank said he’d heard of some thought being given to bring a natural predator, Rosenbusch said you have to be careful about that, “They’re parasitic wasps and they’re like the size of gnats… the USDA, when we have a problem with this, the first thing that they’re going to start to think about are these biological controls, these natural predators that they can import. But you have to undertake these with extreme caution.” He said it has been tried before with other invasive species and hasn’t always produced the intended result, “They imported a toad to Australia to eat a beetle. The beetle lived at the top of the plants. The toads couldn’t be bothered to climb the plants and they ended up decimating the native insect populations. Same thing with mongoose in Hawaii. They brought in mongoose to eat rats. The rats are nocturnal. The mongooses were in the daytime and they just killed all the native birds.”

Rosenbusch explains how they damage our trees, “Their mouth part is like a straw or a syringe. They insert that into the tree and they’re going to withdraw material and that is going to hurt the tree. You’re taking out the lifeblood out of the tree… What the problem that we have is the byproduct of this… these kinds of insects essentially poop sugar water.” As if that description isn’t gross enough, he goes on,  “There are hundreds or thousands nearby. They’re what we call gregarious. Their defense mechanism is to be plentiful… hundreds of thousands of these insects pooping everywhere are going to get this sticky substance all over the trees itself, all over patio furniture, all over your playground equipment.”

The way to fight back, “If you see a spotted lanternfly, unfortunately, yeah, stomp on them… you can go to mass.gov and you can report a sighting of spotted lanternfly… In terms of real control of these on your landscape, I would highly recommend reaching out to a tree company, a licensed professional to come out and to spray for it.”