PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — While most spotted lanternflies are dead in the winter, there are efforts underway to find and destroy egg masses that can survive the cold temperatures.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is urging people to seek out the spotted lanternfly egg masses.
"They lay eggs basically on every surface outside. Doesn’t matter what it is. They will lay eggs on it," warned Agriculture Department spokesperson Shannon Powers.
She said if you can identify the egg masses, you can destroy them.
"The egg masses are pretty easy to spot, if you know what you are looking for. They look like a smear of putty or mud and they can be on a sidewalk, a wall, outdoor furniture, tree, a rock, anything."
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Powers said to just take something with a hard surface, like a knife, or even a credit card, and scrape the mass off. Then squish it. Inside each mass are 30-50 eggs which are just waiting to hatch when temperatures warm up.
Since the spotted lanternfly arrived in the state in 2014, it has spread to 26 counties, most of them in the central and eastern part of the state.
According to Powers, 82,000 cases of spotted lanternflies were reported this year in Pennsylvania, and 15,000 of them came from Philadelphia county alone.
Research at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences shows the spotted lanternfly has the potential to cause $324 million worth of damage and eliminate 2,800 jobs, in a single year.
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