![]() “The majority of humans are not ecologically literate.” But people understand what domesticated pets are, and they feel sorry for them,” she said. “Meanwhile, feral cats are slaughtering songbirds. “People are feeding feral cats in the pandemic,” the urban ecologist Marielle Anzelone pointed out. Those elimination efforts were strategic, relying less on an army of citizen mercenaries who might have been more likely to stomp out the beetle because it was ugly than they would violate something as dazzling in its appearance as the spotted lanternfly. ![]() First sighted in Brooklyn in 1996, the beetle wasn’t fully eradicated from the city until 23 years later. ![]() Half of the trees in New York were vulnerable to it, and the invasion resulted in a huge deforestation. 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. The presence of the lanternfly brings us another reminder that our commitments to sustainability are all too frequently in conflict with our aesthetic values. “I can’t think of something they don’t lay their eggs on - cloth, metal, furniture, sides of buildings and of course trees.” There are no natural predators that go after them, no organic pesticides to shut down their operation, so if you see one, “squish it,” Ms. “They can hitch a ride on a baseball cap in the back of your car,” Ronnit Bendavid-Val, the director of horticulture at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, told me. The insects hop and fly only short distances, but they move with ease and reproduce maniacally. 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.” Biollo understood that the lanternfly is a problem for many reasons, but mostly because it zealously feeds 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. Biollo correctly identified what he was looking at as a spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), an invasive pest from Asia that arrived in the United States seven years ago and in New York City last year, immediately landing on the Most Wanted list of local environmentalists, who have brought a General Patton-ish energy to the project of expunging it. ![]() After two attempts, he managed to squash it.Ī software engineer who follows a lot of naturalists online, Mr. Biollo’s particular grasp of the moment might have simply begun sketching what looked like a detail of an exquisite Chinoiserie wallpaper, but he knew that he was in the presence of something insidious. It had situated itself near an entrance to the High Line. On this day, a mall-cum-office park would dubiously provide the inspiration, but not long after they arrived, they noticed something out of context and quite beautiful - a tiny creature with two pairs of wings, the front set a pale gray elegantly dotted in black, and the back set smaller and accented in bright red. On a recent weekend afternoon, Damian Biollo went to Hudson Yards with his wife to meet up with a drawing group that typically convenes in Central Park, where the mysteries of nature reveal themselves more reliably.
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