Happy Nice Mall

One weekend afternoon recently, Damian Biollo and his wife went to Hudson Yards to meet with a drawing group gathered in Central Park, where nature’s mysteries reveal themselves more credibly. That day, a mall-office park would have undoubtedly been a source of inspiration, but soon after arriving, they noticed something out of context and quite beautiful – a small creature with two pairs of wings, a gracefully pale gray set on the front and back with black dots. part is smaller and with bright red accents. It was located near an entrance to the High Line.

Without Mr. Biollo’s particular grasp of the moment, he might have started drawing what appeared to be a detail of an exquisite Chinoiserie wallpaper, but he knew something insidious was in its presence. After two tries, she managed to crush him.

Mr. Biollo, a software engineer who follows many naturalists on the Internet, accurately described what he was looking at as a spotted lighthouse fly (Lycorma delicatula). An invasive pest that arrived in the United States from Asia seven years ago and in New York last year has landed on local environmentalists’ Most Wanted lists, bringing a General Pattonian energy to the project to eradicate it.

“I spent 10 minutes looking for them and killed eight people,” he said. They were everywhere that day, in a closed area around 34th Street towards 11th Street. In two hours, he killed 76-40 of them in just a few minutes. “Honestly, I felt like I was in a warped video game,” he said. “I killed eight of them and thought maybe I could score as high as 10.”

Mr. Biollo understood that the lantern fly was a problem for many reasons, but mostly because it feeds on the sap of more than 70 plant species, leaving them vulnerable to disease and other natural enemies, and threatening to undermine climate control. change. The issue is taken so seriously in Pennsylvania that the state has issued a statement. Spotted Lantern Fly Quarantine Order and TreatmentIt imposes fines and possible criminal sanctions on anyone who deliberately transports the insect from one place to another at any stage of its life through “recreational vehicles, tractors, mowers, grates” and “tarps, mobile homes”. , tile, stone, deck boards” or “fire pits”.

Insects jump and fly only short distances, but they move with ease and multiply wildly. “They can hitchhike with a baseball cap in the back of your car,” said Ronnit Bendavid-Val, head of horticulture. Brooklyn Botanical Garden, tell me. “I can’t think of anything where they didn’t lay their eggs – fabric, metal, furniture, the sides of buildings and of course trees.” There are no natural predators to go after them, no organic pesticides to stop their operations, so “if you see one, crush it,” said Ms. Bendavid-Val, “that’s the message.”

The New York State Department of Agriculture, concerned by the angler fly’s proximity to grapes and all the dangers to vineyards in the Finger Lakes and Long Island as a result, will ask you to go beyond war and explore. When faced with a sample that prompts you to take a sample, put it in a bag and “or put it in a jar with rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer” your ice cream, its purpose is nothing more than to take advantage of the extra Purell. You’ve bought in the last 18 months, it’s not entirely clear whether the goal – death – will be achieved. Once you’ve made the torch fly your victim, you need to write to the agency to provide additional details about your sighting, stating “street address and zip code, intersecting roads, landmarks or GPS coordinates,” according to the website.

You can follow these directions, hunt this creature, grind it to dust and feel like a warrior, but you still have to recognize the insect’s natural gift for metaphor. The spotted lantern fly made its way to New York in the midst of a pandemic and first arrived in Staten Island to follow our ecological partners. The chief among them turned out to be Ailanthus altissima., otherwise known as the Tree of Paradise, otherwise known as the central tree of the 1943 novel. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Writer Betty Smith herself wrote that she was aggressive and a symbol of urban resilience, “grown from overgrown plots and neglected rubbish heaps.” “It was the only tree that grew out of cement.”

The presence of the torch fly reminds us once again that our commitments to sustainability often conflict with our aesthetic values. The last time the city faced such a threat was about 15 years ago, when the Asian longhorn beetle entered the country with wooden packaging materials. Half the trees in New York were vulnerable to it, and the invasion resulted in massive deforestation. First seen in Brooklyn in 1996, the bug had not been completely eradicated from the city. until 23 years later.

These eradication efforts were strategic, relying less on an army of citizen mercenaries who might be more likely to squash the beetle because it was ugly than if they would violate something as seemingly dazzling as the spotted torch fly. Urban ecologist, “People feed wild cats in pandemic” Marielle Anzelone pointed. “Meanwhile, feral cats are slaughtering songbirds. “But people understand what pets are and feel sorry for them,” he said. “Most people are not ecologically literate.”

To its founder, Miss Anzelone NYC Wildflower WeekShowcasing nearly 800 plants endemic to New York City, the sudden interest in the spotted lantern fly is another indicator of our dazzling approach to managing our ecosystem, choosing a bad guy when we need to think holistically. “There is a lot of concern as we have a wine industry in New York State,” he said. “As soon as there is a commercial dollar sign, there is attention. But there are many invasive plants in New York City that are more destructive.”

Even in the midst of the climate crisis, biodiversity is not taken seriously in a place where nature is often seen as a novelty. Researchers are currently working on innovative methods to permanently control the spotted torch fly population. But once they succeed, of course, it will inevitably be replaced by something else, another minor foe that has escaped from its original habitat on a container ship. The pace of global trade and life makes it impossible to imagine otherwise.