Partnerships
People are already using Lantern Hunt to find and remove spotted lanternflies in six states. Partners can direct that kind of effort toward the species, places, and seasons that matter to them. Anything marked Proposal is a plan we want to build with partners, not a program that exists today.
Who we want to work with
Sponsors
Fund a removal campaign in a region or season you choose and see the verified work it produced.
Land
Organize removal on and around your property, with a reviewed record of what was done and where.
Conservation
Give volunteers a structured way to act and document results alongside your existing programs.
Public sector
Pilot community removal within your rules and judge whether the records are useful to your program.
Community
Bring students, members, or neighbors into an organized hunt, with a shared record of what the group removed.
What we offer
A free iPhone app that lets anyone find, remove, and record an invasive species, with points, streaks, and a leaderboard to keep people going.
In-app guides to every life stage, so participants know what to look for, when to look, and how to remove it safely.
Before and after photographs on every removal, each reviewed by a person before it counts. How review works
Approved removals tied to a location, summarized by state and county without exposing anyone’s home. See the map
Campaigns with a defined area, season, and species, with outreach to bring residents, growers, students, and visitors into the effort, and reports drawn from reviewed records.
Payments for verified removals, funded by a partner and set by species, life stage, location, and season. How it would work
Today, participants earn points for verified removals. The proposal is to let a partner add a cash reward. A county parks department, for example, could offer a set payment for each verified spotted lanternfly egg mass destroyed in its parks between November and April.
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Which species, which area, which dates, and a total budget.
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The partner can pay more for the removals it cares about most, as described below.
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They remove, photograph, and submit through the app. A reviewer approves or rejects each submission.
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Payments go only to approved removals inside the campaign’s terms, and the partner receives a report and map of the results.
Species
Higher rates for the species a funder is targeting, or for one newly arrived in a region.
Life stage
More for an egg mass than an adult, since one egg mass holds 30 to 50 eggs.
Location
Premiums inside priority areas, such as a vineyard edge, a park, a watershed, or the leading edge of an infestation.
Season
Rates that rise in the weeks when removal does the most good, such as egg-mass season before spring hatch.
Variable payments are an established approach. Florida pays its python contractors more for longer snakes and a separate amount for nests. More examples.
Species portfolio
The spotted lanternfly program is running now. The other five are species we would like to build programs for with partners. Each is harmful, safe for ordinary people to remove under the right conditions, and easy to identify. Our five tests
Lantern Hunt’s working program. Partners could sponsor egg-mass drives in fall and winter, organize hunts on vineyards and orchards, or bring a school or park into the effort.
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Pull campaigns with land trusts, parks departments, and utilities along trails, prairies, and rights-of-way, timed before the plants set seed and recorded plant by plant.
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Hand-picking campaigns for gardeners, growers, and residents, coordinated with Washington’s eradication program and giving the state a record of where beetles are being found.
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Spring pull campaigns with conservation groups, schools, and volunteers in woodlands and preserves, April through June, before the plants go to seed.
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Winter egg-mass scraping campaigns with towns, homeowner associations, and park systems in regions where the moth is established, between mid-October and mid-April.
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Support for authorized trapping in Washington, subject to state permits and trapping rules, working with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribes, and shellfish growers.
CreditTwo examples in detail
These two are worked out further than the others. They are proposals, with no agreements in place, and the same planning would apply to any of the six species.
Grapevines are among the spotted lanternfly’s hosts, according to USDA APHIS, and grape growers are among the hardest hit. Vineyards in affected areas have a direct stake in removal on and around their land.
The proposal: work with vineyards to organize removal in the seasons that matter most, using Lantern Hunt to document the work, with the option of sponsor-funded incentives for participants.
What we would work out with a vineyard
Sources: USDA APHIS; Penn State. A Pennsylvania vineyard, shown for illustration; not a Lantern Hunt partner. Photo credit
In January 2022, Washington’s governor issued an emergency proclamation directing the Department of Fish and Wildlife to eradicate, reduce, or contain European green crab. WDFW reports roughly 1.74 million green crabs removed from Washington waters between January 2022 and March 2025.
The proposal: explore whether verified removal records could support existing trapping and monitoring, in coordination with WDFW, tribes, shellfish growers, and other permitted partners.
How we would approach it
Source: WDFW quarterly progress report, spring 2025. Photo credit
Start a conversation
Include who you are, the place and species involved, and what a good outcome would look like.