i think asking the general public to kill Spotted Lanternflies is a bad idea. besides having unknown efficacy, i think it can lead to mixed messaging about the seriousness of the threat. for example, here’s Kate McKinnon telling people that they should kill SLFs, while winking and suggesting that she’s not going to follow that same guidance: https://youtu.be/L2eygzQzyug?t=48.
it would be better messaging, i think, to ask folks to track sightings of SLFs and to report them to local authorities (so that they can kill them with a little more seriousness) as a primary message, and then secondarily saying that folks can kill SLFs, if they like (as opposed to should kill). this way, regular folks can still appreciate and meaningfully help to combat the threat without getting into the moral squishiness of having to kill something by their own hands (unless they want to).
down in my area (Houston), Chinese Tallow (Triadica sebifera) is a great food source for honeybees and birds, and i don’t think there’s evidence that Tallow trees would damage crops, but they can easily turn large areas into monocultures, pushing out all other vegetation. so they are still devastating from an ecological perspective.
i don’t know whether Spotted Lanternflies are similarly devastating to native ecosystems, but they sure have spread quickly. here’s a thread with visualizations of the spread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/map-showing-spread-of-spotted-lanternfly-since-2016/6377, and here’s my own attempt to visualize: https://youtu.be/wB_kI4cDgSU.