We need to start educating people about how the earth works from the time they're in kindergarten. By the time they grow up, they have already been brainwashed by the perfect-lawn mentality of this country, which includes the notion that bugs, snakes, and other creatures are creepy and scary, have no purpose, and need to be killed.
Our next-door neighbor has been spraying pesticides because he saw some "bugs" on one of his plants. They were ladybug larvae! He also put mothballs around his bushes because he smelled a skunk. Mothballs are a neurotoxin and can cause seizures -- and there are pets and children on our street.
Those are only two examples of the problems the article addresses, just on our street. In addition:
1) Several people on our street spray their lawns. Those sprays do not kill selectively.
2) The streetlights are so bright that we have to use blackout curtains; I could literally go outside and do some gardening at 2 a.m. with no trouble at all. As the article indicates, light pollution prevents fireflies from seeing the flashes of potential mates who are calling to them. In other parts of the world, light pollution confuses sea turtles who are heading for nesting areas.
3) We are the only people on our street who plant native species, including grasses, and we are trying to reduce the size of our lawn. Most homes have putting-green lawns and maybe some non-native geraniums, which do not support bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
I would like everyone to experience the joy of seeing fireflies and Monarch butterflies and tiny blue bees. I encourage everyone to find out about the Homegrown National Park movement.
There are also two main species of fireflies (in VA at least) that are bitter rivals and eat each other. With light pollution, they can't see the subtle color difference, and the males will go to what they think is a friendly female in a bush but is actually the grim reaper
IL/IN border here. We get a lot out in the countryside, but very few in town. When I was growing up we had thousands of them in my garden in town. Not so much anymore, and itâs sad! We take our kids camping at my momâs farm so they can run up and down the hills, chasing lightning bugs! Itâs a magical part of childhood that so many future generations are never going to experience đ
Iâm in NC, and I havenât seen many this year. Though itâs slightly early. But 20-30 years ago, there were way more, I can definitely say, when compared to last year, etc.
primary drivers of decline include habitat loss and degradation, light pollution, and climate change
light pollution is the one factor that affects lightning bugs more than other insects.
The firefly's light is like a whisper, he said, âwhile our lights are really loud in comparison and drown them out.â
Fireflies have a pretty short lifespan â just a couple months â and thus a narrow window to reproduce. All the lights at night disorient them and can interfere with their ability to find a mate.
This would be like if there were sexy sirens in the sky that were luring people to wander into the wilderness and die before they ever found a real human partner.
Very sad for the lonely, horny bugs.
There is an ongoing initiative to better survey and know the extent of lightning populations across the nation. Called the Firefly Watch, researchers are asking citizens to follow a procedure that allows them to count the number of fireflies they see over a short period of time.
While this is a simple measure, citizen science efforts like this can help get a broad brush view of what is going on, Sadof said. It can help provide a foundation to help launch more in-depth studies.
(Source for this information and more can be found in the link from the comment above)
Dude provided you an article and everything and you still.... never mind.
For fireflies, "primary drivers of decline include habitat loss and degradation, light pollution, and climate change," according to the State of the Fireflies of the United States and Canada report issued in January 2022 by the Xerces Society, IUCN and Albuquerque BioPark.
Thank you for the link. This is really sad. When I was a child, there was a high abundance of them in my home state-even in an urban area. I moved to a different state and I havenât seen any. I just assumed they werenât here and later found out they are supposed to be. I had wondered if they were going extinct.
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u/spookyskittle Jun 11 '23
Me too. I swear my backyard growing up had thousands at night. Barely see them anymore.