Ava: Welcome to the Community Corner, where we talk about interesting topics with people in the Bowling Green community. I’m Ava Thoman. Today, we’re talking about a highly invasive pest that we’re now dealing with in the city with Adrien Lowien-Kirian, the urban forester for Bowling Green. Thanks for joining me.
Adrien: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
Ava: First off, what does it mean to be an urban forester, for those who don’t know?
Adrien: So, urban forestry considers the whole city as an area of canopy of growth for trees within a whole urban area. So as an urban forester, my job is to look out for all the trees and how we function as a whole as an urban area. Specifically, I look at the trees that are in our city areas, public space. So you’ve got, like city trees and all of the right-of-ways between the sidewalk and the streets. So all those trees there, all the trees within public spaces. But, I also work with residents for educational purposes and things like that across the city. All for the trees.
Ava: Yeah and for those who don’t know, this pest that we’re now seeing in BG, what is a spotted lantern fly?
Adrien: So a spotted lanternfly is a bug that looks like this here. A lot of times you’ll see them with their wings folded up on on different trees. And what it is is a sap sucking insect that came from Asia and primarily creates more of a nuisance than major issues. They don’t bite or sting humans. They’re not going to cause any harm to you if they land on you. What they can do is, if they get, many of them get on trees and around your area, they can… what happens is what we call honeydew, which is actually the defecation from the insect, can build up and cause mold issues and things like that. They’re also quite unsightly. They can occasionally cause harm to some species of tree, although the tree that it causes the most harm to is also an invasive species from Asia, which is its native host, which is the Tree of Heaven and that can actually kill that tree, but we don’t kind of enjoy that tree here either, because it’s also quite invasive and displaces a lot of our native species as well.
Ava: Yeah and you said this was an invasive species. So how did they first get into the United States?
Adrien: So I think, what most experts think, is that it came in on shipping containers, which is also how it tends to get around across the United States, as well as it uses egg masses on railroad cars, on cars, on busses, trucks and that’s how it gets from area to area. It gets a certain area with the egg masses and then they hatch and then they go to feed on trees that are in the local area.
Ava: Yeah and then, when were they first spotted in Bowling Green?
Adrien: So the first confirmed reports that I’ve had in my position here with the city was this year, this spring, which I was not terribly surprised by. I know that they’ve been in Toledo for a few years and they’ve made their way down. They were in Perrysburg the year before and last year had a pretty bad population, so I was expecting to see them in Bowling Green this summer and we did, in fact, have had quite a few sightings of them, although they’ve not been seen in huge masses that we’ve seen in other areas, like I said, around Toledo and Perrysburg, where there’s just swarms of them. But I would expect to see more and more in the future.
Ava: Okay and then where are you most likely to spot one?
Adrien: So again, their native host tree is the tree of heaven, which is an invasive tree often found like an unimproved areas or unmaintained areas, so like an alleyways along the railroad tracks, things like that. But they will not… they don’t just land on that tree. They love that tree. It’s their favorite, but they will go to other trees, kind of like when you go to a buffet and they might have your favorite food, you’re going to have some of that, but you’re also going to try the other things. So they will go to other trees. I know there’s been a few spotted on campus, again, not a ton since campus. The area is mostly very well maintained through the staff, through the ground staff. There’s not a lot of the host species of tree of Heaven around, but you will see it on other species. As far as maintaining them, the best thing is to squish them, if you see them for. Property owners to keep them away. The best thing is to try to remove the Tree of Heaven and if they don’t have that host plant, they’re less likely to hang around.
Ava: All right, well thank you for joining us. Back to the news desk.
