Accountability
How a removal becomes a number on this site.
Every figure Lantern Hunt publishes comes from submissions a person has reviewed. This page explains what a submission contains, how it is reviewed, how the statistics are calculated, and how participants’ locations and privacy are protected.
The submission
What a participant sends.
Each removal is submitted from the participant’s phone as a single record.
- Type
- Adult spotted lanternfly or egg mass
- Quantity
- How many the participant removed
- Photos
- A before and an after photograph, with the time each was taken
- Location
- Latitude and longitude from the phone, with its GPS accuracy estimate, when the phone provides them
- Review
- Submission time, review status, review date, and any rejection reason
Review
A person reviews every submission.
The reviewer sees the full submission, including both photographs, the type and quantity entered, and the full-precision location. Nothing counts until it has been approved.
Submitted
The participant sends the removal
Type, quantity, two photos, and the location, if available, arrive together. Nothing is visible to other users yet.
In review
A reviewer examines it
The reviewer looks at the photographs and the details entered, then approves or rejects the submission.
Approved
Counts as verified
Points are confirmed, and the removal appears on the in-app community map at reduced precision.
Rejected
Does not count
No points, and it never appears on the map or in any statistic.
Review checks the photographs and details of each submission. It is not a laboratory identification or an on-site inspection.
Statistics
How the figures are calculated.
The figures on this site are calculated from an export of the app’s submission records. They are updated by hand, and each one shows the date it was calculated.
- What counts
- Approved submissions only. Pending and rejected submissions are left out.
- Start date
- Submissions from the public launch on September 29, 2026 onward. Earlier submissions were pre-launch testing.
- Verified kills
- The total quantity on approved adult submissions
- Egg masses
- Counted separately and never added to kills, because one egg mass holds 30 to 50 eggs rather than one insect
- Geolocated submissions
- Approved submissions, adult or egg mass, that include a latitude and longitude
- Duplicates
- Each submission is counted once
- Rounding
- Headline figures are rounded down, so 2,067 appears as 2,000+
Location data
Useful for mapping, careful about homes.
A removal often happens at someone’s home. Exact locations are seen only by the reviewer. Everyone else sees them at reduced precision or grouped by county.
- Full precision
- Visible only to the reviewer, never to other users
- In-app community map
- Approved removals only, shown at reduced precision of about 10 meters. That is still precise enough to suggest a street or property.
- Pending and rejected
- Not visible to other users
- Website map
- Each location is assigned to a state and county, and the coordinates are then discarded. No coordinates are published on this site.
- Small numbers
- An area shows an exact count only when at least three people contributed and it has at least ten kills. Otherwise it shows a range, such as “fewer than 10.”
- No location
- Approved removals submitted without a location count in the totals but do not appear on the map
Privacy
What we collect and what we don’t.
- Accounts
- No name or email address required
- Photo metadata
- Uploaded images are created fresh, without the original files’ embedded GPS tags
- Tracking
- No third-party advertising, analytics, crash-reporting, or tracking software in the app
- Selling data
- We do not sell personal information
For agencies and partners
Need records for a specific area or program?
We can discuss coverage, review standards, and reporting formats for a pilot or a sponsored campaign.