Leaving the office in South Providence on a recent evening, I noticed a small red bug on the hood of my Kia.
“That’s a pretty little critter,” I thought. But later, I learned that the cute bugs are actually an enemy.
I had found a small spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect originally from China whose spread the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management is battling to contain.
The bugs were first found in the U.S. in Pennsylvania in 2014. By 2021, they had been found in Warwick, according to the DEM. Now, they are established in all five counties of Rhode Island and at least 17 states.
The flies don’t pose a risk to people or pets. But the population is increasing – the DEM received more than a thousand reports of the bugs in July and more than 1,500 so far in August, a spokesperson said. Typically, the bugs reach the adult stage in mid-late August, making them easier to spot.
“They are a plant hopper,” said Noah Tennison, the Spotted Lanternfly response coordinator for RIDEM. “And one of their favorite things to feed on is grapevines and stone fruits. So they're a huge risk to our agricultural economy here.”
Tennison met me at the Ocean State Media studios to check out the lanternflies I found there. As I walked him over to the part of our parking lot that sits under a row of trees, I found a lanternfly on top of a car. But he was looking at the tree next to us.
The tree is what’s called a Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), sometimes known as a stinking sumac, which Tennison says the bugs prefer. On branch after branch, we found dozens of flies clumped together. DEM recommends people remove these trees, since lanternflies often infest them.
The flies have no natural predator in the U.S., so the DEM has asked the public to squash the bugs when they see them. Tennison says he can’t count the number of bugs he stomps out each week; it’s likely in the thousands.
“The URI Biocontrol Lab has been working on a biocontrol wasp actually from Spotted Lanternfly's native range in China, Dryinus sinicus,” Tennison said. “It feeds on those first couple of life stages of spotted lanternfly. And hopefully they can release that soon, and maybe there'll be some sort of predator that can start really preying on them.”
The DEM is also asking the public to help track infestations by filing a report on its website. And environmental regulators across the country are asking people to help stop their spread.
“It's super imperative that if you know you have spotted lanternfly around where you park your car or just around your house in general,” Tennison said, “try to check your vehicle before leaving just so we're not taking those little guys off to New Hampshire for the weekend where we don't have spotted lanternfly.”
