{"id":629,"date":"2026-07-07T11:35:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T11:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=629"},"modified":"2026-07-07T11:35:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T11:35:41","slug":"the-lanternflies-are-here-is-it-okay-to-stomp-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=629","title":{"rendered":"The lanternflies are here. Is it okay to stomp them?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last summer, I was standing on a block near my house when I saw a very distinctive bug skittering up a tree trunk. It had a polka-dotty wing, with red underneath. It was, unmistakably, an invasive spotted lanternfly.<\/p>\n

Read more How to actually get to know your neighbors<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These are all over Brooklyn \u2014 they took off here around 2020 and 2021. And I knew what I was supposed to do in this situation: kill it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Following orders, I ran after it and inelegantly tried to hike my leg up the tree trunk to stomp it dead. A neighbor I didn\u2019t know yelled at me from down the street, something like: \u201cGet it! Get the lanternfly!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I didn\u2019t know quite how to respond because, actually, I\u2019d been feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, I like being part of a civic group project, and it is<\/em> satisfying to squash a bug. But I also wanted to say something like, \u201cIsn\u2019t it weird that we\u2019re all happily participating in a campaign to kill living creatures? Something about it just feels wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lanternfly season is now upon us. And I\u2019m once again going to be faced with a moral question that comes up repeatedly in conservation, when we\u2019re forced to choose between different types of beings and their lives: Should I personally be killing these invasive lanternflies? And what is the right way for any of us to think through that kind of decision, anyway? So this year, I enlisted the help of an environmental scientist who is also deeply schooled in moral philosophy to help me figure this out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The lanternflies are here. Now what?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Around 2004, lanternflies landed \u2014 from their native habitat in China, India, and Southeast Asia \u2014 in South Korea. And they did a lot<\/em> of damage there. Mostly to grapevines, but also to apples and other tree fruit, to ornamental trees, and to timber trees. Then, in 2014, the bug was detected in the United States, in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Non-native species arriving in new places are not always a forever problem, but the worry is that a non-native species without natural predators can get out of control. They can displace other species or, in the case of lanternflies, potentially kill a lot of trees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So Pennsylvania took serious steps to manage the lanternflies, such as quarantines and pesticides. But the containment measures didn\u2019t totally work. And when the general public got wind of the problem, some of them started taking matters into their own hands. (One enterprising individual even blasted some lanternflies with a blowtorch.) By 2018 and 2019, despite the efforts to stop their spread, the lanternflies landed in the city of Philadelphia, about 60 miles away from where they\u2019d first been detected. And in the summer of 2020, amid everything else going on, their populations were exploding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s footage of the bugs absolutely blanketing <\/em>the sidewalk at the entrance of an unlucky Philadelphia Chipotle. There are photos of them wrapping around the trunks of Pennsylvania trees. And ordinary people in Philadelphia fought back \u2014 as they\u2019d been told to! That summer of 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture posted on Facebook about the lanternflies, saying that people should \u201csquish their guts out any time you see them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A kill order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People got\u2026very into this. Stomping. Squishing. But \u2014 and here\u2019s where it gets tricky \u2014 it doesn\u2019t seem like the individual stompers have had that much of an actual impact on lanternfly population levels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Scientists I talked to said that the point wasn\u2019t to eradicate the bugs as much as slow their spread, to give other places more time to prepare. If you look closely, you can see that the public outreach campaigns in Pennsylvania, and eventually New York, also recommend things like reporting lanternflies if you see them outside of the quarantine zone (in Pennsylvania, you can even call the hotline at 1-888-4BADFLY) and scraping away egg masses, which is more efficient than stomping individual bugs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When I<\/em> started to hear about lanternflies in New York City, though, it seemed like those nuances had gotten lost. People were kind of just stomping with abandon \u2014 even with a sense of glee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But there were also signs that people were conflicted about the kill orders. A friend told me that, in the summer of 2021, she saw someone running after a lanternfly, yelling out, \u201cThe New York Times told me to kill you!\u201d I personally know a couple of people who gave up stomping. The question even made it on Jimmy Fallon, where comedian Kate McKinnon winked openly at the audience while pretend-promising to kill the bugs the next time she saw them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People were starting to wonder why <\/em>exactly we had to kill the lanternflies, which are, quite frankly, gorgeous. And actually, the science was getting more murky on this question, too. The initial worries about how the lanternflies might kill all these trees and crops? Those have not panned out. As of now, in the US, the bugs are mostly a problem for grapes and, therefore, for grape growers. The damage they can do at vineyards is real, and there is still an argument to be made around making sure that they don\u2019t expand to new places, where they might be even more destructive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These past couple of summers, I have shared Kate McKinnon\u2019s ambivalence about stomping lanternflies and how happy we all seem to be to comply with the kill orders. But this year, I wanted to face my ambivalence head-on \u2014 make a moral choice I can live by. So I called up Chelsea Batavia, an environmental scientist who has thought and written a lot about these issues. And when I did, I learned more than I had bargained for about the ethics of conservation \u2014 and of decision-making in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bugs, choice, and \u201cmoral residue\u201d <\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As I was thinking through my decision about whether or not to kill lanternflies this summer, if they should be so unlucky as to cross my path, I read through several different papers and articles. And there was one that I kept thinking about, which had been written by Batavia. She lives in Washington State, where she now works in government. (She\u2019s representing her own views here, not the state of Washington.) Back when she was a PhD student at Oregon State University, studying ecosystem management and environmental ethics, she got interested in moral dilemmas in conservation. People who care about conservation are mostly trying to do the right thing, but sometimes, they face conflicting moral demands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou know, it\u2019s challenging,\u201d she told me when I called her up. For example: \u201cShould we be killing barred owls to save spotted owls?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This happened in the Pacific Northwest starting in 2013. Images of the bodies of invasive barred owls that had been killed in the name of conserving another species made people uncomfortable. And Batavia gets that. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018thou shall not kill,\u2019\u201d she told me. But when you dig into the details, it gets more confusing. \u201cWe can think about it as an abstract, but at the end of the day, we are making decisions. We\u2019re acting in the context of particulars, right? And once you get into those particulars, these high-level, \u2019Yes, we should kill,\u2019 or, \u2019No, we should not kill\u2019\u2026there\u2019s too much nuance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Batavia started thinking deeply about the ethics of this kind of situation. And she agreed to help me think through my version of that with the lanternflies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI guess a first response is that I think it is grossly inappropriate for anybody to be killing gleefully,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This seemed like a very reasonable place to start. A lot of my discomfort is <\/em>about how the killing can feel like this big collective game. But even if you put gleeful killing aside, there is still the question of killing at all. Batavia suggested looking into the world of \u201cnormative ethics,\u201d which is about helping us choose what to do. It has three main frameworks we can consider. Number one is consequentialism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201dConsequentialism says, very coarsely put, the right action is the one that produces the best outcomes. So the focus is on what happens,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the case of the lanternflies, there\u2019s one big obvious outcome: \u201cWe\u2019re killing life,\u201d says Batavia.<\/p>\n

Read more How Trump\u2019s son-in-law sparked a revolt in Albania<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many smart people think that insects are conscious and feel pain. So that\u2019s in the \u201cdon\u2019t kill them\u201d column.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But on the flip side, humans<\/em> are conscious and feel pain, and humans can be harmed by lanternflies. Especially humans who grow grapes. So that\u2019s in the \u201ckill them\u201d column. Batavia pointed out a whole world I hadn\u2019t thought of, also in the \u201ckill them\u201d column: If I stomp on lanternflies now, then maybe I\u2019m preventing people in California or other states from having to make this decision. I\u2019m also preventing the lanternfly\u2019s future children from being killed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHow do we weigh the value of a potential life that never was against the life that is here right now?\u201d she asked. \u201cI think that consequentialism is a useful tool for thinking through things.\u201d But, she notes, it\u2019s not a cure-all for decision making. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of uncertainty, and there are a lot of types of outcomes that can\u2019t be quantified \u2014 and even if they could, they would not be comparable. So, I think that\u2019s not helpful for you making your decision to try to make a calculation based on the best outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I was relieved to hear this. Part of me thought I had to have all <\/em>the information in order to responsibly make this decision \u2014 read all the appendices of all the studies. But that\u2019s not necessarily required in order for me to make an ethical choice. It might even be a way for me to avoid a difficult decision. Though Batavia did say, it\u2019s of course important that scientists <\/em>keep learning more about outcomes. Like, if it turns out that the lanternflies making it to California is definitely going to cause mass human famine, that could really change my moral calculation. But for the moment, we decided to leave consequentialism aside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The second framework Batavia told me about is deontology<\/em>, which means \u201cthe science of moral duty.\u201d It focuses on the intention behind my action. Why<\/em> am I doing it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen you talk about feeling like you\u2019re participating with your community and doing something to support your hometown, that to me sounds a lot like a deontological claim,\u201d Batavia said. \u201cYou\u2019re thinking about your intention. Your motivation is not to be cruel and kill lanternflies. Your motivation is to be a good neighbor, to make that connection, so to me, that\u2019s not irrelevant. That is something to pay attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Okay, so we put those issues into the mix. And then, framework number three is called virtue ethics. It is a really old branch of normative ethics that essentially says that virtues should guide your actions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAristotle talked about virtues being things like courage and temperance,\u201d Batavia told me. \u201cThe idea is then, as you are moving through your life and you have to make moral decisions, you do what a virtuous person would do.\u201d But: \u201cThe reason why this was not very popular as we got into the Enlightenment and we were looking for rules, it\u2019s, like, that\u2019s not a rule.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s definitely something to be said for rules, but this flexible framework seems useful to me, too. Because there actually are <\/em>multiple reasonable ways to think about this. Like, maybe a virtuous person would take on the task of killing bugs on behalf of their community. Or maybe a virtuous person would decide that the principle of protecting life is the most important thing here \u2014 gleeful killing of creatures can be a slippery slope. The important thing is to think about what\u2019s actually good, and then try to take action to get there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I also realized I had been assuming that I needed to make an ironclad decision that I could never violate \u2014 I think because I wanted to make sure I wasn\u2019t letting myself off the hook. But it\u2019s also true that there\u2019s no law that says I always kill lanternflies or never do. Maybe I\u2019d been looking for something overly simple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen I see work in conservation ethics \u2014 and a lot of ethics in general \u2014 it tends to be quite definitive. It says, like, \u2018this is right,\u2019 \u2018this is wrong,\u2019 and I really like language that gives us a way to say that it\u2019s not that simple,\u201d Batavia told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When she was getting her PhD, she felt like she really needed language like that to describe these conservation moral dilemmas, like the one with the invasive owls. \u201cSo I started snooping through some really gnarly moral philosophy stuff,\u201d she said. She was \u201cLooking for any scholarship that acknowledges that basically, moral ambiguity is a thing, that there\u2019s this gray zone,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s how I found this language around moral residue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Moral residue describes the feeling that\u2019s left behind when you make what you think is the best ethical choice\u2026and it still just feels bad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c\u200aIt\u2019s an emotional response, actually, which is super interesting, because moral philosophy puts a high premium on the mind, on rationality, on logic, on thinking, and deliberation,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it was really interesting that an emotional signal is given language.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Allowing my emotions into the room was clarifying. I\u2019d had an idea that, if I still felt bad about my decision, that meant I hadn\u2019t arrived at the right decision. But actually, I realized that I might just feel bad about both options \u2014 and I still have to choose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOne thing moral residue is not meant to do is let anybody off the hook,\u201d Batavia cautioned. \u201cThere is no \u2018no-action\u2019 option. You either kill them or you don\u2019t. And I think you\u2019re probably going to have to sit with some sort of discomfort either way.\u201d But she thinks wading into the complexity is the right way to handle things. \u201cThat\u2019s a responsible way to be, as a free, willing moral agent in the world,\u201d she told me. \u201cLike, if that\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing here as people, then I guess I\u2019m not sure what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding the best \u201cgood\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By the end of our conversation, I knew that Batavia wasn\u2019t going to tell me what to do. But I did ask her what she<\/em> would do if the lanternflies got to Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf they get to Washington, I\u2019m definitely going to learn more,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think that this is where I would acknowledge my unwillingness to accept that personal burden of taking a life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She said she wouldn\u2019t stomp them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAnd that would be a loss \u2014 because I would recognize that I do have an obligation for all the reasons that we\u2019ve already talked about, why it might prevent future moral injury. But I think my reverence for life is probably a little bit too strong of a signal for me at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My conversation with Batavia helped me make my own decision. When the lanternflies come out this summer, I am<\/em> going to stomp them. That\u2019s not where Batavia landed for herself, but she modeled a way of making the decision that accepts the moral residue and makes the choice based on what feels most important to her. For me, the communitarian value of helping people in my region really matters. But, I also accept that means I\u2019m going to be taking insect lives, and<\/em> that my individual actions actually don\u2019t have that much of an impact. I\u2019ll have to live with the bad feeling that brings \u2014 the moral residue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There is<\/em> one big thing that I\u2019m going to force myself to do differently from last year. This summer, if someone shouts out encouraging words as I go in for the kill, I\u2019m going to make myself speak up about my discomfort. To say something like, \u201cI actually hate killing these bugs. Isn\u2019t it a rough trade-off that we\u2019re being asked to make?\u201d Because I think that having a weird, honest conversation with a stranger about something that matters might also be good in itself.<\/p>\n

Read more Voters love rent freezes. Economists hate them. Except for this one.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

See More:<\/span><\/p>\n
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