Whether you choose to kill insects or not, there is one bug across the northeastern United States health officials want you to take care of immediately: the spotted lanternfly . Though it may seem like a colorful moth worthy of an Instagram post, it’s actually an invasive species that can wreak havoc on trees, plants and other landscapes, resulting in millions of dollars in damages. The spotted lanternfly originates from China, and George Hamilton, department chair of entomology at Rutgers University, believes they landed in the U.S. via a crate coming from the Asian country. The invasive insects – which actually don’t fly but rather are leafhoppers – were first spotted in Pennsylvania less than 10 years ago. Now, they can be seen throughout the northeast and mid-Atlantic, from the five boroughs in New York City to parts of Indiana. They may have spread so easily because they are hard to notice. From hiding on cars and packages, they’ve become such a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In less than a decade, the spotted lanternfly has wreaked havoc on plants, trees and state economies. That’s why officials want them dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[248,246,59,6,185,351],"class_list":["post-174423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-animals","tag-cars","tag-health","tag-lifestyle","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}