​Don’t Let the Light Go Out

Recently, while scooping up ‘toadpoles’ from the edge of the pond where marsh grasses, cattails, and bushes thrive, I had a conversation with my neighbor about some of the problems associated with people who left bright lights on all night around the lake. This woman missed the firefly display and was aware that light pollution was partially responsible for the loss of these beetles.
 
  When I first moved to the mountains almost 40 years ago I camped in the field next to the brook and couldn’t fall sleep at night because it seemed as if the field itself was on fire with thousands of magical lights that blinked as they skimmed the tall grasses, glowing like gold or emerald jewels. For a naturalist like me, the season of summer began with the days of longest light, thunderstorms, and the advent of fireflies lighting up the night. The loss of so many ‘lightening bugs’ impoverishes us all.
 
Fireflies have been around since the dinosaur era; these extraordinary insects are at least a hundred million years old with one group spreading through this continent and the other colonized Europe and Asia. There used to be about 2000 species of these insects; now many are facing extinction.

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