I was just out on my deck and spotted a bunch of lantern flies. My first thought is to squish the bastards. Hold on, though. They are on the invasive vines that I spend tons of time getting rid of every summer. There aren’t many other plants in that part of the yard. Do I let them have at it until I see them on other plants?
You should probably kill them now if possible. The feed, they lay eggs and the it gets worse.
We got lucky, either our large crow population or large seagull population figured out lantern flies were easy to catch meals. So their numbers after the first 2 years are low in my town. 1 town inland and they’re a plague apparently.
I did kill the ones I saw. Fortunately we also have a big crow population, so maybe they get to work on them soon.