The Tree Huggers worked closely with Melissa Boyer, the school nurse at Glenside Elementary School to try and tackle what has became a recent problem in Berks County known as Spotted Lanternflies. When we first met with Melissa Boyer at the Elementary School she was very concerned for her students. They have a lot of trees that have been previously infested by Spotted Lanternflies within the bus areas where the kids are constantly walking to and from the school district. She didn’t want the kids to have to deal with the lanternflies again this spring, so she tasked us with scraping the egg masses off the trees and then taping them incase we missed any eggs that may have hatched. Once the eggs hatch they would get stuck to the tape and then eventually die.

The problem that we as a group found ourselves having with this particular task is that there isn’t a whole lot that is known about the Spotted Lanternflies being as though they are a fairly new species. We weren’t quite sure when the best time would be to approach this matter and to have it remain effective throughout the entirety of the season. After doing extensive research, we found that the best time to tape trees in order to rid them of Spotted Lanternflies is in the month of May. Being as though we don’t have the luxury of being able to tape in May which is the preferred time period, we went ahead and tapped the trees anyways in hopes that it would still have a positive impact on getting rid of the flies in the area. Furthermore, we waited until the last week of class to tape the trees in hopes that it would be just as effective as starting the whole process in the beginning of May. We hope to go back to Glenside Elementary School at some point during our summer break to see if taping the trees a couple of weeks early was sufficient. Ideally, we would like for the students not to have any issues in regards to these Spotted Lanternflies because we all know how annoying this species has been. With that in mind, hopefully we have done our small part in making sure that this fly is no longer a future problem in our area.

The message we want to send to the youth at Glenside Elementary is the importance of bringing awareness to an insect that was just discovered here in Berks in 2014. Many of us didn’t know the full effect that lanternflies have on our environment. These flying insects looked pretty and weren’t particularly harmful to humans as they didn’t bite. By putting up bright yellow tape around many of the trees around Glenside, kids will naturally ask questions about what it’s meant for and to help answer that, our work on the informational pamphlet will be laminated and hung around the school halls. I think the main message of our work is to help educate others on how to stop lanternflies, not enough people know the implications this can have on our agriculture and daily lives. By working together and passing the message along, the exponential growth rate of these insects can be stopped.

We gained a lot of new information and have a new insight on Spotted Lanternflies in regards to the problems that stem from them. It’s crazy how one species of an insect has grown so much just over the last couple of years as well as how it has had such a negative impact on our state right now. The four of us grew together as a team throughout the semester and worked diligently with each other during this whole EACAP process. The Glenside Elementary school nurse, Melissa Boyer has been very helpful and assisting us throughout our EACAP journey. Not only did we learn about the insect, we learned what to do when we see them on trees, we helped educate the children at the school so that they are aware, and hopefully people in the community and in the state will become aware of this issue. Each and everyone of us took something positive away from this learning experience that we hope to be able to continue in the future.