Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding encouraged Pennsylvanians to look for and destroy lanternfly eggs prior to the spring hatch to help slow the destructive pest’s spread.
The lanternfly quarantine prohibits moving lanternflies at any stage of life, as well as infested items like firewood, brush, and other debris.
Among other measures, it requires those who operate businesses or travel for business in and out of quarantined counties to get a permit.
More than 33,300 businesses across the U.S. and Canada have gotten permits for more than 1.42 million employees, demonstrating that they know how to recognize lanternflies and avoid transporting them.
Click Here to learn how to comply with the quarantine order.
"As you clean up your yard or just enjoy beautiful Pennsylvania spring days, you can help keep lanternflies from becoming a summer nuisance and harming our valuable grape and nursery industries," Secretary Redding said. "Every spotted lanternfly egg mass you scrape and squash is 30-50 damage-causing insects that won’t hatch in May.”
Adult insects die off over the winter after laying tiny rows of eggs, covering them with a putty-colored protective coating.
The egg masses, which can be on any outdoor surface, from trees and rocks to equipment and law furniture, each contain 30-50 eggs approximately the size of a pinhead and have survived winters in sustained sub-zero temperatures. Scraping and smashing them is easy and requires no special tools.
Learn how to recognize and report spotted lanternflies, control them on your property, and keep from taking them to new homes when you travel at the Spotted Lanternfly webpage.
In 2024, the department expanded the quarantine area by one county to 52 counties, although more than half of those counties have relatively small, isolated populations of lanternflies.
The quarantine expansion comes after extensive surveys by Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in concert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in every Pennsylvania county, with a major emphasis on Erie County, where much of the state’s $1.77 billion wine and grape industry is concentrated.
“The Shapiro Administration is committed to protecting and preserving the tremendous value agriculture brings to our economy and our daily lives,” Redding continued. “Funding research to develop safe, innovative pest control methods, monitoring and treating destructive pests like lanternflies aggressively, and fostering strategic partnerships between government and industry are all critical tools Pennsylvania has invested in to continue to control this destructive pest.”
Click Here for Agriculture's announcement.
Visit Agriculture’s Spotted Lanternfly webpage for more information.
Related Articles This Week:
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-- PASA Sustainable Agriculture Begins Staff Furloughs; Federal Funding To Support Farmers Still Frozen [PaEN]
-- PA Dept. Of Agriculture Accepting Applications For Sustainable Agriculture Grants Starting April 21 [PaEN]
-- PA Dept. Of Agriculture Expands Spotted Lanternfly Quarantine Area To Bradford, Sullivan, Venango, Wyoming Counties [PaEN]
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-- AP: China Announces 34% Across-The-Board Tariff On All US Imports, Farm Products; Adopts Export Controls On Rare Earth Minerals [PA Exported $3.5 Billion In Products To China, $2.6 Billion In Farm Products]
[Posted: April 4, 2025] PA Environment Digest
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