Spotted Lanternfly inRacine County, WISPOTTED LANTERNFLY GUIDE

Racine County occupies a critical position in the SLF monitoring landscape: it sits directly on the Wisconsin-Illinois border via its southern neighbor Kenosha County, placing it among the Wisconsin counties most immediately in the path of northward SLF spread from Illinois. Designated as a watch zone in 2025, Racine County is a Lake Michigan shoreline county with significant industrial port activity in the City of Racine and dense suburban development in Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant — communities that sit astride I-94 and receive heavy freight traffic from the Chicago logistics corridor daily. The Root River passes through Racine County from Burlington in the west to Lake Michigan in the east, creating a riparian dispersal corridor that could channel SLF from introduction points along I-94 into natural areas along the lakefront. Burlington, in the county's interior, is a growing community along the Fox River that draws goods and personnel from the broader Chicago-Milwaukee metropolitan zone. Sturtevant hosts a major Amtrak and freight rail interchange — one of the more significant rail nodes in southeastern Wisconsin — making it a particular monitoring priority for SLF introduction via rail freight originating in Illinois. Wisconsin DATCP regards Racine County as among the highest-priority watch zones in the state given its geographic exposure to established SLF populations just across the Kenosha County line.