Meet the Vigilantes Trying to Wipe Out the Spotted Lanternfly

[Music] this is the spotted lanternfly it looks totally harmless from some angles it's even kind of beautiful [Music] but this little bug is actually an eco-terrorist now a bunch of civilians are on a mission to wipe out this invasive species or at least kill as many as possible they could be flying anywhere so as of now we could start seeing them as we're walking i'm going to show you the area where they are and then we're all just going to kind of fan out right there and squish as many as we can catch this fall staten island held its first squish-a-thon to train people how to find and kill the spotted lanternfly this is supposed to be the worst part for a spot of lanternflies in the park and it's also where they found them first in new york so they think this is the best place for squishing today it's a new problem for new york spotted lanternflies just showed up here for the first time in 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic we want to kill them as fast as possible by squishing their head with your fingers this one pregnant for sure do you see that giant yellow on the side and how inflated its belly is that would be a hundred future spotted lantern flies if we didn't squish this one today one two three and they might twitch a little bit after they died you could just try to squish their head again so just really try to get that head that's the quickest way to do it there we go they have such a beanie little light a little bit and they never said bug squishing was easy ew i think that's i think this one with the big fat yellow abdomen that means it's pregnant right yep kill it oh do you like squishing these oh sick it's kind of satisfying you don't even need to put them in the bag you just squish them with your bare hands wow cool squash them what does it feel like when you squish them weird kind of feels like they're bleeding and then you have like all this bug juice all over your back that's all that happens are you going to go home and squish them about your school now that you know what to do i'm probably going to be squishing them for the rest of my life what is that it's disgusting yeah it looks like it's raining literally it's feces it's all species how refreshing [Music] i'm going to toilet right now the lantern flies feces is called honeydew and they'll just go to the bathroom all over the place they'll just you know defecate all over the place and it'll cause like a black city mold to grow in their feces and it'll just cover all these plants it makes the plants really unhealthy and can lower the yields for the crops this literal show started in the u.s in 2014. the current theory goes that a few spotted lanternflies hitched a ride on a cargo ship from china to pennsylvania because each female can lay at least 35 to 50 eggs that handful of bugs quickly multiplied now there are billions the spotted lanternflies are threatening orchards the logging industry and wine one study estimated they could cost just the state of pennsylvania 300 million dollars a year parks and local governments now say the problem is too big for them to solve alone and are asking residents to step up as they say in the bug community the only good lantern fly is a dead lanternfly so we're about to go beat mandy she is a spotter lanternfly super squasher and she's gonna take us on a bug hunt come on in okay great so this is your bug kit this is my bug kit um i keep it pretty simple honestly i know this one looks the most fun my son loves this one um i'm not a great shooter so um it's like 20 bucks on amazon it's just use salt um and i think it's better for killing things at closer range but this is my uh executioner my executioner this is my tool of choice this is what i get most of them with honestly i catch most of them just with an empty bottle with like a wide opening they're really stupid bugs so if you approach them with a gatorade bottle they literally just jump right into it mandy force is a mom of two a full-time nursing student and as of a few months ago a spotted lanternfly assassin in a facebook group of over three and a half thousand fellow bug haters she's been dubbed the black widow for her savage daily kills so this is your go-to spot this is my go-to spot so this is where i get like about 200 kills a day impressive yeah and you can see i mean there's like they're literally nice they're like caked into the sidewalk i mean they're just like everywhere yeah they are wreaking havoc and so staying alive this one's still alive hey oh he got away damn it i normally don't like killing living things but um it's the moral and ethical right thing to do it's nothing personal against the bugs they just this is not where they belong and they are not welcome here she looks harmless she's a mercenary how many lanternflies have you killed by now i think the last time i did the math it was about 7 000. i'm not like a monster i would never harm a living being i love animals i love insects i love nature but i love our community more if that means i have to kill these bugs then i will kill these bugs when covid hit it was obviously very difficult being a healthcare worker and shortly after the pandemic i was diagnosed with ptsd and going on my morning walks and killing spotted lanternflies it gives me a reason to get outside and and get some vitamin d and some fresh air and be in nature and it's been the best thing for me biologists think it's probably no longer possible for the u.s to completely get rid of the spotted lanternfly and while this civilian army of squashers may be no match for these bugs right now it's better than nothing when you see signs that say you know if you see this bug please kill it how do you feel about that as a strategy like do you think that that is a good enough plan if these bugs are so dangerous is it good enough no i think it's kind of the best we can do at this point until scientists can come up with a better solution i think we are fighting a losing battle it's here to stay it's made that very clear but if we can keep their population in check by killing the ones that we see and eradicating trees and removing invasive species of trees that attract them every little bit that we do is helping someone who is a farmer who does rely on hops plants and grapes and fruit for a living you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 478,202

Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2020

Id: XfkosBnvq2Q

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021