I work in forestry virtually at the original epicenter of SLF and they're virtually not seen anymore there. I've observed a huge number of native predators going after this virtually defenseless protein packs.

And their damage was very limited even at the height of their boom.

Reality is that the quarantine won't really do much just like the Emerald Ash Borer one didn't. In the end predators will emerge in the new areas SLF infests and control the numbers.

Life finds a way! That’s really reassuring

Virtually.

Live in Montco and maybe saw a handful last summer

If only those damn flies could read.

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They're in my backyard

Had a horrible infestation near me, all of last summer/spring. Very much hoping they don't come back.

The first year that the SLF moves in is the worst. They cover everything. By year 2, they're bad, but noticeably fewer in number. By year three the predators, parasites, and diseases have caught up to them. We're relatively close to the PA epicenter and they're just another insect. I see < 12 per year.

Yep, 3 years and very few sightings here. My yard outside Downtown Clay.

I mean "life finds a way", but this is still upsetting and changing the ecosystem. Predators gaining new food sources isn't things returning to normal.

Isn't that part of the point, to try to control things until predators figure out if it's safe to eat? That's what helps mitigate ecological damage.

Yep. Terrible for 2 years. And on year 3 wasps, birds, and spiders were DEVOURING these things.

I almost miss killing 30+ per walk now lol

It made little difference where I work. The predators had it figured out less than two years after SLF arrived. The quarantine has little to do with it as people either are unaware or unwilling to follow it and are moving the creature around at will.

Nature represents the final determiner and sometimes moves very fast in doing so.

The state has worried so much about SLF and yet didn't seem nearly as concerned about EAB which has cost an inordinate amount of money and put the electrical grid and people's physical safety at fat greater risk.

But it really hasn't where I am and I work in the area where it's been the longest. They're almost non-existent now and except for a few non-native Tree of Heaven and non-native types of cultivated grapevine, there hasn't been much plant mortality in the couple years that SLF boomed before predators figured them out.

The increase in food for insect predators will lead to an at least short-lived insect predator boom. I'm saying that is disruptive. It's not a rebalancing.

I'm admittedly pretty ignorant to what the state has done as a matter of policy against either invasive species (other than that I'm vaguely aware that firewood is not supposed to be transported between parks and such).

How much is being driven by government action, vs word-of-mouth? I don't imagine most people would see EAB on a daily basis - unless you're closely inspecting trees, would we be living ignorant to the infestation around us? Meanwhile with the lanternflies, there are so many that it feels like you're experiencing a biblical plague, it makes sense that everyone is stomping them and talking about stomping them.

The EAB lives nearly all its life cycle out of sight under the bark so out of sight, out of mind unlike the flashy SLF and all of its instar phases. Human beings and their governments tend to react to that which they see whether or not it merits it

In Perry I hadn't seen a single one until last summer. In neighboring Cumberland they were everywhere with zero mitigation in place. I'm sure they'll be out here in abundance this year. Guess I should buy bigger stomping boots.

It's things returning to a different, new normal the way they have in response to pressure since the beginning of time. Our job was never to get things back to the way they were, it was to ease the transition.

They’re still all over Berks county. Probably killed several hundred last year on just one tree.

I disagree with "that's how it's been since the beginning of time".

These bastards infested my apartment balcony last summer, so i gotta kill dozens of them before i can relax outside. Bought myself one of those Bug-A-Salt guns, and its the most effective lanternfly killer so far; literally shreds them to pieces in one shot.

You can disagree but unless you can produce for me a dinosaur you're wrong

We also saw their numbers diminish in our area. Other animals have definitely figured out they are food.

Now if only there was a predator for the lesser celandine plant taking over Pennsylvania.

Do you think the extinction of the dinosaurs was from natural causes?

That's a problem along the creeks where I work too. The floods are seeming to help spread it.

I’m in MontCo and three years ago I’d see dozens a day. Think I saw 1-3 total last year.

This is anecdotal, of course, but I saw a lot of them in Lancaster County 2-3 years ago. They were all over my property in the summer of 2020 and 2021. This past summer I saw substantially fewer. This probably explains it.

Virtually

Everyone’s saying how they barely saw them. This past September when I was kayaking the Susquehanna (Columbia area) they were everywhere on the river and would always jump on board.

I think their populations are cyclical and we will see years with more and years with less. Pennsylvania's fruit agriculture industry is still figuring out the impacts of the SLF spread.

My daughter and I really bonded over sitting out front with my Bug-A-Salt gun and a box of kosher salt picking these little bastards off in the one tree they swarmed when it first started. I'll miss that. A lot of joy was had.

A virtual virtuoso.

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I saw a lot of them in Philly last year, they definitely haven't gone away. We need to train the birds to go after them more.

If it's expanded, by definition, it's not a quarantine, is it? Accept reality: The battle is lost.