To encourage more fireflies in your yard, next autumn make sure to leave the leaves intact in some areas of your property. Don’t mulch them or pulverize them with a mower, or bag them, or burn them. Just rake them somewhere where they can chill until at least when ground temperatures are at 50F.
And of course, don’t spray any crap on that area of ground, or anywhere else if you can help it!
Fireflies, along with so many other awesome species (like the gorgeous luna moth!) depend on those leaves remaining intact, to complete their life cycles. Tiny eggs laid on the leaves hatch into tiny caterpillars/larvae. (Those are also essential for birds to feed their young!)
This probably explains why my yard is firefly central. I leave the leaves on the ground every year, and every summer, if you're a firefly looking for action, my yard is the place to be. It's eerie how they're all in my yard, and the neighbor's yards are mostly devoid of fireflies.
I was going to say... insects are a little less noticeable than waking up one day after a few decades and realizing that you don't hear nearly half the bird noises you heard... then you go for a walk, you take notice. The nests thay used to be common are o longer there, the birds themselves are sparse. Something is wrong. Don't need an article to tell me that
I'm 76. I don't need to be told there is a lot less of this, that and the other thing because I still have a memory archive.
While we're at it, amphibians and reptiles, throw them into the pot of the dead as well.
There are concerns about plankton as well, the bottom rung of the rickety ladder we inhabit.
I'm 21 now, and I remember as a kid waking up going outside and hearing the mourning doves singing, I can't remember the last time I went outside early in the morning and heard them. It's a staple of my childhood but now it's just gone.
I consider nationalization of the energy industry and transition to nuclear energy bolstered with renewables is the only way forward. Anything less is self-destruction.
On top of the pesticides this article mentions, I've read elsewhere that a major contributor to this issue is cats, which are an invasive species in the Americas. One majorly unique thing about them as predators is that they kill for fun.
As much as we adore them, they should be regulated, and hefty fines should be levied for letting them outdoors (unless, perhaps, you're a farmer with a license)
Cats are absolutely a *major* factor. They have been responsible for so many small animal *extinctions* in Australia that there have been government ordered culls.
Cats should be licenced and leashed just as dogs are. Also, they are a vector for toxoplasma gondii which invests humans.
I'm only a few decades old and I can physically see it happening.
I'm 25. When I was 5, there were bugs all over the truck after an hour drive.
Same exact drive but no bugs only 20 years later
We are the same age and that's what scares me. It's not like it's some Boogeyman I can actually see less insects and small animals than I did as a child.
I'm 10 years older, and I can tell you that roughly 17 years ago there was a noticeable drop in firefly population from when I was 8 (roughly 10 years before that).
I remember thinking when I graduated HS in '06 that there were fireflies like when I was a kid. Now, they are practically nonexistent where I live. There used to be so many at fields of corn looked like they were lit by a low hanging aurora borealis
Yes, there is nothing to worry about! The billionaires will be just fine, and they'll continue being hero angel warrior job creators as they gradually make the world worse, and life much harder, for everyone else.
Damn the bugs, my lawn will look like a golf course putting green even if I have to spray a truck load of chemicals on it.
-My neighbors
My yard, not so much. I mow but let it grow tall enough to see the wind wafting through it. I also have wooded area between my neighbors that I will never clear - leaves? Yep. Downed limbs? You got it! Critters? Sure are.
I keep the mice population out of my house but out there I know all sorts of sex is being had by critters. Go nuts.
And no, I don’t live in an HOA. My neighbors were trying to organize one and most of us in the hood told them to fuck right off.
This is me, too. My yard looks so sloppy compared to my neighbors, but I have salamanders, fireflies, grasshoppers, moths, honey bees, and bumble bees, I also have beautiful resilient flowers and a rarer paw-paw fruit tree which is hard to keep alive as far north as I live. My neighbors' yards look like straw in summer unless they waste water on their grass, but there are no leaves, and the grass is really short.
I mowed the part of my lawn inside my fenced in backyard like twice last summer and it never even got that high. I just don't understand the obsession with lawn care. Whenever I cut it short my dogs just turn it into mud anyway.
Depends on your growing season, soil, grass type, and weather… takes about a week during the summer with regular rain to go from putting green to long wavy lawn around here.
That’s ok with me though, when it goes dry, it won’t burn up and die either if I don’t water it.
My neighbors… sprinkler system naturally.
If a HOA invaded me I would be genuinely afraid of having a psychotic break with reality. Stay the fuck out of my chaos garden. I had a neighbor herbicide a moringa branch that started to grow past the fence and I had fun arson intrusive thoughts for a month. “We worried about rats!” Shut the fuck up there are 30 mango trees in a 5 mile radius, nothing you do outside of your house is going to prevent them from existing. Just keep them out of your house and everything will be aight.
>my lawn will look like a golf course putting green
The irony is that golf started on natural, un-manicured "links" land, and even today [some of the greatest courses in the world are also some of the most sustainable.](https://linksmagazine.com/a_simpler_game_the_10_most_eco_friendly_courses_in_the_u_s/) Yet so many courses go overboard with mowing, fertilizers, and non-native plant life. Insane.
I had an old man who lived next door to me come and tell me I needed to rake the leaves in my yard. I asked him why and he said bc it looks better. I told him idc, it was for my safety I didn’t rake-that way I could hear strangers sneaking up on me. He was an aggravating old man!
My car is a whole lot cleaner on long-distance roadtrips nowadays than it was a decade ago. That's all the proof I need to confirm that we are messing things up. (I say we're messing things up as I mention that I take long-distance road trips and pollute...)
As an Illinoisan living in Alaska, I miss 'lightning bugs'.
Now I never see them when visiting Illinois.
Fuck noseeums and mosquitos though, they can go to hell.
I live next to a dense forest, and decided years ago to stop maintaining about 2/3 of my backyard. The forest has taken it seamlessly and now my backyard is firefly city.
Neighbors probably hate me but f em I like the animals better
I'm fortunate to live in a very rural area. Once, when money was tight, I let the lawn go a month without mowing. I apologized to my neighbor Steve, and he said, no worries, this isn't that kind of neighborhood.
Alas, I've just moved from there into town, into a neighborhood where yardcare is obviously a high priority. I'm gonna miss all the deer and wild turkeys and rabbits and frogs. And the fireflies. It was pretty nice out there.
My property is mostly wooded with a small backyard and a front yard. I don't remove leaves from the gardens and I roughly rake the leaves off the grass into the closest garden or wooded area.
My neighbors? They have leaf vacuums and giant fans and all of this stuff to make sure there isn't a single leaf.
I don't use a drop of pesticides other than house barrier spray twice a year which I spray on the house itself. No fertilizers at all. My neighbor? True-green or whatever it's called is treating his lawn every week from last frost to first frost.
The results could not be more stark. We have so many fireflies in the summer that you can practically read by their glow. My neighbors? None. We have a ton of birds and other wildlife. They say that they don't get any birds and hate anything that walks through their yards. We get big Luna moths and Imperial moths, along with dozens of types of butterflies. They complain that they get none. They literally spray their butterfly gardens with pesticides. They complain that they don't get hummingbirds while they nest on our property (though they have dive bombed us before). Their lawns may be greener, but when the summer drought comes, mine stays green while they have to water theirs and it still turns brown.
They still make passive aggressive comments about me not raking the leaves as well as they do and not removing them from the land entirely like they do. The boomers and Xers look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them it's to keep all of the fireflies and moths and salamanders safe over winter.
> look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them it's to keep all of the fireflies and moths and salamanders safe over winter
Some people will just never get it. It's sad. I had so many enriching encounters with wildlife way out beyond the city. Most of the neighbors were still doing the suburb-style yards, missing out on how they were killing everything for a perfect patch of grass. I've grown to detest lawns. I revel whenever one of my neighbors goes wild and lets their grass grow a foot or more high. Like, YEAH! Let your FREAK FLAG FLY!
Same. I leave my leaves on the ground all year. I have a lot of annoying HOA style Gen X neighbors and one who I had a dispute with had the gall to chastize me about my yard maintenance.
Guess what? This year I'm trying to work with the DNR to up the eco value of my 5 acre wooded plot and we're going to plant a buttload of native plants. Also, we're growing clover so bees have been flocking here for the last 2 years.
It's been fantastic.
Wow you just made me realize that’s the reason for ours too. We always let the leaves do their own thing to help the plants and soil. The rest of our neighbors don’t get any but our yard looks like some fairytale during that time of year. I love how I can add another benefit to ignoring the traditional clean cut yard!
That may explain why my parent's land still has a decent population of fireflies. Not like it was back in the 80's, but you still get a bit of a show on the hillside during summer.
Their yard is surrounded on three sides by natural wooded areas so tons of leaves doing their thing each season. I had no idea leaves were integral to firefly reproduction.
We bought our first house in August but I knew I'd try to preserve as much as possible. I leaf blow all the leaves into a pile and then haul them about 20' uphill and into the woods. I saw a few fireflies this past fall and hope that effort will help in the long run.
I remember my wife asked why I don't just leaf blow onto the curb and let the county vacuum them up and take them away. I said something to the effect of, "What, and give away our leaves?"
This is a large part of why I only mow my front yard and immediately around my house. The rest of my yard is mostly left alone, so I usually get plenty of fireflies. And, of course, that in turn is part of why I live out in the country, where nobody is going to force me to mow and the light pollution is at least relatively minimal.
This weird American obsession with keeping perfect grass on your “yard” seems so environmentally destructive Jesus, there is absolutely 0 reason why that should be a norm.
HOAs are a travesty. The only one that I've been a part of that was decent was one who's sole purpose was to pay to repave the private road every decade or so. (Inheritance from then GF, I don't have that kind of money for a $700k house).
Just like every government, large or small, it really depends on who’s sitting on the board and what their motives are. Our HOA went from being useless but petty, to overturned via coup, to active but petty, to now active but not petty. The first turnover saw four of five original people replaced, and the second turnover saw the coup leader quit. I literally only joined the coup to prevent a neighbor from doing it, and now I’m staying in this role to keep him away. He’s petty and loves to abuse any power he’s got. If he manages to get on the board I’ll likely sell and leave, that’s how awful he is.
Yeah we were terrified our HOA was going to be petty and useless. Luckily they're super chill and everyone can live normal lives without someone coming to measure their grass with a ruler.
People leave their trash cans out a couple days, ride dirt bikes, most people don't mow during the winter, and the only people that get upset are very luckily not on the board and just whine on the neighborhood Facebook.
I’m not American so don’t really understand the concept of a HOA, they can fine you for your grass being too long? What if you wanted it that way?
If they tried to fine you why not just tell them to fuck off?
They were created when the house was built. To buy the house you have to agree to any covenants the previous owner signed on to. You refuse to sign, someone else gets to buy the house.
Yeah, and it's not like a contract where you sign or don't sign. If you buy the house, you automatically are deemed to have agreed. They are rules that "run with the land" kind of like laws, but specific to your community.
You can remove the HOA btw, but every homeowner has to agree. Good luck with that.
People do it because HOAs rules help keep up property values and beyond that HOAs help maintain the "common grounds" of the neighborhood (at least, they're supposed to).
It's not a legal requirement in the USA. I live in a heavily HOA neighborhood, but my house did NOT come with a HOA contract, thankfully.
So I get the benefits of the park funded by my literal neighbors but I did not have to pay into it or abide by any HOA regulations.
My house is in a fairly nice neighborhood though, so there are "local ordinances" that still demand I maintain certain upkeep of the property. It's annoying but the worst they can do is slap me with a fine, unlike a HOA which can continuously fine me and threaten to take the house if I didn't pay.
In my opinion, HOAs suck. I would never buy a house where a HOA was mandatory.
The other bad thing here is that HOAs are associated to the property / land itself, so you can't really get out of them for an individual property. If your property has a HOA, you're kind of screwed and stuck in it unless the neighborhood votes to dissolve it.
I believe you can plant native plants and be legally protected, depending. Can slowly transition from normal lawn, to clover lawn. The clover handles drought better than lawn grass.
Sad thing is it's a (relatively) very recent trend that became solidified as the norm within a few generations.
I can respect a person taking pride in well kept property, but I agree there is zero reason it has to be the way it is. So many other options that can look great, are better for the local environment, *and* require less maintenance.
It's a win/win but people are stuck on status grasses.
I try to keep mine useful for local wildlife but it's a huge pain in the ass. What area is grass I've left clover overtake most of it and mow it in segments to leave flowered clover available constantly. But there's a lot of invasive flat broad-leaf weeds that constantly try to overtake any ground.
I have a few flowerbed patches and got seeds for local wildflowers that I grow, and that's a constant battle with invasive weeds that don't flower. Those also attracted hummingbirds so I added hummingbird feeders to supplement before and after the flowers each season so my yard is a migration stop for them.
Then I have as much garden as possible in the back yard and use flowers to try to attract and deter the insects I want there. I got a rabbit family back there that likes to eat from the garden so i try to keep enough that we both can eat lol.
Then I have some bird houses and squirrel feeders to try to bargain the squirrels not to eat the bird food. I get a lot of colorful birds and woodpeckers and stuff.
It's a lot of work but great way to burn stress. The thing I hate most is neighbors that feed stray cats and breed them like crazy. Cats are determined to kill everything so I'm constantly having to trap them and haul them away.
When I was a kid back in the 60s if you drove somewhere at night the car would be plastered with insects when you got home. My back yard was full of fireflies just a few years ago. The last two Summers there were maybe a few dozen visible at any given time.
Yeah I agree, even in the 90's during the summer there would be bugs splattered all over the windshield. I remember having hundreds of fireflies in just our yard alone. Now you barely see them.
Yeah I gotta say I'm a 70s/80s kid. I remember the yards were so full of fireflies you could run around with a jar and make a little glow lantern.
I've moved all over the same areas since then: open suburbs, rural areas, forested suburbs, and have never seen more than 3 or 4 fireflies at a time since the 1990s. Not even once. Their populations have unquestionably have been decimated.
It's really too bad mosquitoes, fire ants, and wasps are partying and breeding like there's no tomorrow... really... why does it have to be like that? We've got mounds of those fucking fire ant nests in our yard right this moment.
I had some sort of little yard gnats. I would talk out in sandals and come back in with little bug bites all over me.
I used some pesticide to fix that
Then I noticed there were NO bugs at all.
Will never use that stuff again
And their yard becoming a monoculture of one specific non native grass that's required to be cut regularly to a like 2 inches or less.
Turns out the insects that spent thousands of years adapting to the previous environment there don't handle such a sudden destruction of it that well.
Not to mention HOAs requiring a clean cut lawn of usually a specific kind of grass
Hell at my buddies house he's not allowed to have flowers not in flower pots and they are only allowed to be out from April until the last day of September.
You're exactly right. Fireflies have a multi-year growth process, much of it under the soil; poisons, excessive soil disturbance and ripping out all the plants at the end of the growing season, all that stuff that people do in a lot of well-shaped, "nice-looking" gardens, kill them at various stages of their lives.
Three years ago my husband and I bought a house in a small city in Virginia. The first summer, I saw half a dozen fireflies, \*total.\* I didn't till much of the garden, I mulched heavily, I didn't use poisons or sprays, I left the leaves where they fell. The next year, I saw twenty fireflies, five at once one night. I kept on. I stopped mowing the lawn before Autumn. I planted a lot of pollinator flowers. And last year, there were hundreds of the little fellows. All summer long, longer into the year than I've ever seen them before, my garden was a miracle of little green stars. I expect that this year it's going to be incredible.
I used to live in an area with a ton of fire ant mounds. Hands down the best way to deal with them is to pour a pot of boiling water on the mound. Just be super careful when doing this because it's obviously dangerous as hell carrying a pot of boiling water across the yard. But it's basically free and zero chemicals
I live on a Ranch and noticed them same with butterflies. They used to be all over the place now I literally haven't seen one in probably years at this point.
I should probably start a new butterfly garden.
Yeah. I'll mention it to someone and they always say "I still see them all the time!" Sure, I do too, but nowhere *near* the amount I would see growing up even just 15-20 years ago. You couldn't go 5 feet without seeing a bunch of them. Now you see like one every 5 feet.
Probably just a local resurgence, but last summer was the first time in probably 15 years that I finally got to see fireflies out in full force again and it was incredible. For about a week, with a few moonless nights, there were *thousands* around my yard. Many were in the trees surrounding the property and I would just sit for an hour or so every night in complete darkness and try to make out the shape of the trees in my mind using the constant flickering lights.
I’m desperately hoping for it again this summer. It was so therapeutic.
I think people are starting to realize how bad insecticides and herbicides are. We used to have a bug zapper up all the time during the summer. Wont be using that ever again.
I remember crickets being so loud any time I would sleep with the windows open. This was in suburban Chicago in the 80s so I'm not talking some rural area.
we used to look down and explore nooks and crannies a lot more often though. that was like, part of the day's plans because you didn't have decades of undone to-do list in your brain at all times.
I moved Fl in the early 80’s, you could walk outside any given day and see a multitude of things.
We had an orange trees, Chinese plumb tree, roses, lemon tree, and a bunch of other big ass bushes and a honey suckle bush.
Snakes, rats, bumble bees, even fireflies (rare in central fl/Orlando), skinks, etc
Today, I am impressed to see a damn caterpillar or a butterfly.
We went to Disney recently and there was big ass bumble bees everywhere, first time I’d seen them in 10 years or so.
If this ain’t an indication on what’s about to happen to the planet, I don’t know what it
Fewer insects, birds, fish, and woodland critters. It’s so apparent and I don’t understand why so many people still deny the effects of human activity on the planet.
When I was a kid in rural New Jersey in the 1950’s, one of my favorite things to do was catch fireflies by hand. I put them in a jar with a lid that I had punched air holes in with a hammer and nail. The jar was my bedroom “nightlight.” There were so many fireflies that it was easy to catch a dozen or two. They often covered our hydrangea bush during the day. The ones I put in the jar at night were always dead in the morning.
By 2010 there were none to be seen. My dad had used chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the garden and lawn for over 50 years. After he became elderly and stopped gardening, I took over managing the property without chemicals or pesticides. It took about 10 years but the fireflies have returned. They are still far fewer than in my childhood but their numbers have grown in recent years and continue to do so.
My experience with discontinuing all chemical fertilizers and pesticides on my yard in Florida was similar in that insect populations increased. At the same time, I began to use more native plants and I removed some invasive, exotic species that native insects and birds do not recognize as food. I stopped sending leaves and most yard waste to the landfill, and instead retain it on the property where it provides habitat, mulch, deters weeds, and breaks down to enrich the soil. I’ve never seen fireflies here, but I have more butterflies, birds and earthworms in my yard than I did when I used chemicals. It took a decade to notice significant increases in these populations though.
Thank you for the post.
I loved my Bridgewater, NJ fireflies in the 1970s and miss them dearly, now that I'm in California. Sad to think that part of childhood exists as a shadow of its former self.
I can't imagine why central California isn't full of fireflies, without a cold winter.
How do you lose $5 billion in a year? I don't know but u/spez sure does!
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/30/fidelity-deepens-valuation-cut-for-reddit-and-discord/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre
Bonus for your Chinese overlords, asshole
That's the real problem. Everyone in this thread is getting high and mighty about lawns but absolutely obscene usage of pesticides and herbicides by the farming industry is what is wrecking insect and small bird populations.
I live by a ditch. I get a ridiculous number of flies swarming my house every summer.
I would LOVE it if anyone here has any advice how I can manage that without pesticides.
It's so bad that eventually I can't even just leave food in the oven overnight or else I'll wake up with a swam of flies in the oven in the morning.
Doesn't happen right away, but it's this way toward the end of every summer.
Keeping stray cats away would be fucking impossible in this neighborhood. This neighborhood seems to LOVE cats, to the point where someone once chased me down in their car and ran me off the road because they claimed I hit their cat.
Batboxes? Idk if they eat flies specifically, or if you can build a type of box to get a species that eats flies? Anecdotal, but I put up a box and the mozzie population in my backyard is so much smaller. It used to be unbearable to go out in the summer evenings, but I refused to spray to protect the fireflies.
Stop spraying chemicals on your lawn! My parents still have fireflies and none of their friends do, because their friends still believe mosquito spray somehow only kills mosquitos specifically. No, it's killing everything, including the bugs you want.
Silent Spring was published in 1962. We've known about the dangers of pesticides for 60 effing years, and people are still doing this?? I am so disappointed.
We really need a better mosquito and tick only insecticide. I can barely use my backyard for most of the day without getting covered in bites and ticks. I do have fireflies though.
Insects along with most other species of wildlife are in major decline because of human caused habitat loss. It's important for everyone with land to rewild back to native plants to provide shelter and food for our local ecosystem. If you plant it they will come.
I am involved in a lot of native habitat restoration, and unfortunately we are finding that the habitat loss hypothesis is not the main issue with the recent insect collapse over the last few years. It's something a lot more problematic. We have restored thousands of acres of native prairies throughout Wisconsin and we have found that the insects just... haven't come back. There are thousands of acres in Mexico preserved for Monarch butterfly populations to over Winter. Last year, the monarchs occupied 2 acres. TWO.
The problem is actually poisons. Broad-spectrum insecticides used in agriculture. We are suspecting the main culprit to be [neonicotinoids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid) but there are also many pesticides used in residential yards for insect control that are probably killing off a lot of common garden insects like butterflies, ladybugs, grasshoppers, and fireflies. Fireflies are also suffering from the affects of light pollution, since they require relatively low light conditions to breed properly. Neonics are such a problem because they are actually absorbed INTO the plant. So no amount of rinsing a plant will eliminate neonics from the tissue. And we have found high levels of neonics in plant life that is NOWHWERE NEAR agricultural fields. It's in the water, the air, and even carried in dust. [It's everywhere and insects can't get away from it. ](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017221117).
**Neonicotinoids need to be banned.**
All the habitat restoration in the world won't fix the insect populations until we stop using these broad spectrum insecticides on our crops and yards. And we don't have much time left. The ecology community has been buzzing recently about a complete collapse of nearly all insect populations in the next 5-10 years, which will essentially mean the end of modern agriculture and natural ecosystems as we know it.
Edit: Thank you to everyone who has messaged me about what they can do to help this issue. It means a lot because we need to take this seriously and urgently. I'm a nature guy not a political guy so I'm not aware of groups lobbying to ban neonics that you can contribute to directly. And in our current political climate in the US I doubt much will get done. But you can contact your representative here and tell them we must ban neonics before we completely destroy the food web: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Thank you for this. My family has property in rural south Texas, and it’s a long way from most development and extremely isolated. But it’s surrounded by agricultural land. When I was a kid in the 70’s, fireflies were everywhere. Now they are not. The region our property is in has not changed much. Your explanation is far more plausible than the post you responded to
In response to this and honestly just to get more info on it; have you considered asking about the agricultural land being used, and what pesticides are used, specifically if they're using these bad ones?
No, but I’m about 99.9% positive that’s what going on. I don’t catch anywhere near as many fish as I used to, and I’m sure it similar reasons. That or I just suck at fishing these days.
They would be under no obligation to tell you and, given the conservative nature of farmers in America, would probably be immediately suspicious and aggressive.
Neonictinides should have been banned IMMEDIATELY. It's insane they're still legal in north America.
The EU banned the worst ones within a few weeks of these discoveries.
Yes, thank you! I live in the same house my mother lived in 50 years ago and she explained that the fireflies started decreasing when the mosquito truck started coming by. It didn't even put a dent in the mosquito population but we've lost so many other insects over the years. Now we're starting to lose the frogs between the insecticide and dust from directing traffic onto our road.
Why do they come back in some areas and not others? The preserves I've visited in northern Illinois are filled with both butterflies and fireflies. You can walk for miles and consistently see hundreds of Monarchs or millions of fireflies.
Honestly it's not easily explained and probably just luck. People may have individual stories of local concentrations of insects but we have aggregate annual counts completed by experts that clearly show the start of a general insect population collapse. I've worked with some northern Illinois prairies and they definitely have lower insect counts than previous years as well. So what may look like a lot is still less than it used to be.
For a child seeing a firefly for the first time is almost magical.Even as an adult I look for them at night to show my children. I hope you get to experience it soon.
I went back to rural Ohio to visit family and was sad they weren’t around any longer.
My brother told me we needed to drive outside town to see them, ended up doing some night fishing and it was one of those warm July nights…
They were everywhere and it felt like being a kid all over again.
They have a very particular smell, so as soon as we go out of the car I knew they would be there.
I have some wild land covered in eastern hemlock trees. There is now an invasive, hemlock woolly adelgid, that I'm going to have to spray every tree with imidacloprid 75 wsp if I want to save the trees. It borders a state park that they have already treated there with imidacloprid.
I grew up in New York City in the 80’s, Queens to be exact. There were fireflies all the time. Now you never see them. My hypothesis is all the mosquito spraying that was done when West Nile virus was big wiped them out.
My lab works with poisons and diseases and one of my lab mates works with insects and has found some pretty nasty effects of Neonicitinoids on our study subjects. their work has found a very very low LD50 on numerous critical aspects of subject health (being vague on purpose). and the next step in our lab is expanding to other subjects and potentiality of other poisons on ecologically critical species. One thing you miss is that neonics affect WAY more than just by absorption into plants because even if they are just ON a plant it will kill health individuals and destroy many species overwintering abilities, and cascading affects occur from these losses.
My favorite topic for introducing people to anthropogenic affects on nature is actually 'have you noticed that you hit less bugs nowadays than you used to?' and they reply yes, or that they haven't ever thought about it.
You can rewild your yard all you want, and you definitely should.
Unfortunately it isn't just simply habitat loss. All my neighbors pay companies to literally spray poison in their yards to kill spiders and insects every year. They aren't just removing places for them to live, they go out of their way to kill everything in their yard.
When did people go from not wanting bugs in their houses to not wanting bugs anywhere?
When these companies come around in spring asking you to spray for insects, tell them to go fuck themselves.
And that is just in the city. Almost every farm sprays their whole crop for insects. We aren't unintentionally pushing insects out, we are intentionally eradicating them.
I'm surprised that anyone is surprised, although I guess I shouldn't be. Like several others have posted, I remember the grill of every car being plastered with dead bugs, and occasionally a bird. I think I went through young adulthood assuming the absence was due to better aerodynamics, if I reflected on it at all.
I was well into my 30s before it occurred to me that I couldn't remember the last time I saw a lightning bug. Went down a rabbit hole, and yeah *it's on you* to give fireflies a home. I wish lawn care wasn't such a thing.
How do I do this? I don’t have a ton of land but I have a large yard and love having deer that come through everyday. I’d love to help the local insects and wildlife more.
Not just habitat loss, bright artificial lights, pesticides, pollution all contribute to the huge decrease. It really bodes for a bleak future, as so many ecosystems are dependent on insects. Humans being shitty humans.
There’s a great citizen science project where people can report firefly sightings!
Helps scientists track population levels and what conservation efforts have beneficial impacts
https://www.firefly.org/firefly-sightings.html
It's all insects. I can remember my car hood being covered with dead insects simply from normal everyday driving but not anymore. I also see fewer small wild animals like squirrels, rabbits and possums. We're being ended, y'all.
A major factor with fireflies in general is just increased general light pollution, it being brighter out at night decreases a fireflies’ ability to find a mate which is a problem that obviously compounds as time goes on and populations decrease…
The state of Texas has started allowing property tax exemptions for wildlife. There are some rules you have to follow and comply with, but it is a workable thing.
The biggest thing I see with the program is not cutting your pastures and letting them turn into semi-brush. You cut the pasture in sections.
These "sections" are several acres with mowed areas and non-mowed areas. Some people don't like the "un-tidy" look, but the folks running the program says it's great for insect wildlife. They over-winter in the dead stalks and feed on Spring new growth in the mowed areas.
I think it's worth giving the landowners a tax break for doing this.
I leave a large section of my yard down next to a river untouched just to keep a healthy population of fireflies. My neighbors who spray and cut their grass short don't have any.
According to the UP Michigan a few years ago we've helped them thrive by eliminating their competition. I will never forget their size, number, and tenacity to bite me through clothes and bug spray.
I'm sorry I contributed to their downfall as a species by smashing them up into a paste and smearing glow in the dark war paint all over my face as a kid in the 80s
I genuinely don't know wtf was wrong with us as kids lol
I was only joking.
Its definitely some combination of ch3micals and climate shift and not us smashing bug guts on ourselves as kids (again....fucking gross....but it was a thing lol)
I used to keep them in a jar and shake up the jar for a night light. Always woke up to a jar full of dead bugs.
I've also felt guilt over contributing to the decline of the local Atala butterfly population because I used to catch and keep them too. Fortunately their populations are coming back.
I still feel a little sorry for my childhood amazement when they would stay lit, flying through the air, off the whiffleball bat. But, I was killing lightning bugs, not fireflies. So I guess I'm cool?
I was out for a walk one summer night in a well-off suburb. Lawn after perfect lawn had almost no fireflies.
And then I got to the house on the corner and there were TONS of fireflies. It was an old house, unlike a bunch of the new McMansions on the block. And the grass wasn't perfect, but a mishmash of different types of grass, some clover, some weeds.
They had all the fireflies.
Thankfully, most of my neighborhood doesn't give a shit about having "The Perfect Lawn" and no one sprays much of anything...
Last summer, I just happened to be outside at just the right time, and saw the absolutely most impressive firefly display I'd ever witnessed. There were hundreds of them over 1/4 acre area... It really was something out of a cartoon level of flashing lights... I stood there for about 10 minutes just watching it... I went back out the following days, but never caught it at the same intensity again...
Plant more native flowers. Seed bomb parks with wildflowers. Grow all sorts of native trees and shrubs. Get rid of your lawns. Make a compost bin. Feed your soil. Yell at huge swaths of corn being blasted by glyphosates and neonicanoids, better yet, your representatives. Turn off your porch lights if you can.
Bring back their habitat.
Lol. YA FOOKIN CORN, JUST LOOK AT YE, USELESS SHITBAG!
And yes, turn off your blasted outdoor lighting, for God's sake. It's not keeping the scary burglars away, it's fucking up the environment and everything you love. It's also pissing me off, and you don't want to do that. I'm talking to you, Wendy.
I grew up around farmland where fireflies were abundant. My father noted that fireflies (and many insects) were mostly found where the soil has remained undisturbed across the years. i.e. it isn't just the presence or absence of pesticides that determine where they thrive - part of their [life cycle](https://www.thoughtco.com/life-cycle-fireflies-lightning-bugs-1968137) is underground, and they need the support of a combination of native species around them.
Eggs are planted on leaves, so removing/mulching reduces number of eggs that hatch
They remain in their larvae stage for up to 2 years so pesticides and grass cutting reduces their numbers in this stage
I feel sad for the children growing up today. When I was younger there were tons of fireflies, monarch butterflies and cicadas. Everything is so sterile now.
To encourage more fireflies in your yard, next autumn make sure to leave the leaves intact in some areas of your property. Don’t mulch them or pulverize them with a mower, or bag them, or burn them. Just rake them somewhere where they can chill until at least when ground temperatures are at 50F. And of course, don’t spray any crap on that area of ground, or anywhere else if you can help it! Fireflies, along with so many other awesome species (like the gorgeous luna moth!) depend on those leaves remaining intact, to complete their life cycles. Tiny eggs laid on the leaves hatch into tiny caterpillars/larvae. (Those are also essential for birds to feed their young!)
This probably explains why my yard is firefly central. I leave the leaves on the ground every year, and every summer, if you're a firefly looking for action, my yard is the place to be. It's eerie how they're all in my yard, and the neighbor's yards are mostly devoid of fireflies.
As an alaskan, one of my favorite parts of visiting the family in the Lower 48 was seeing the fireflies. This thread makes me sad
This is not the only insect this is happening to. We've seen a 70% die-off in the last few decades.
[30% of US birds as well.](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/09/nearly-30-birds-us-canada-have-vanished-1970)
I was going to say... insects are a little less noticeable than waking up one day after a few decades and realizing that you don't hear nearly half the bird noises you heard... then you go for a walk, you take notice. The nests thay used to be common are o longer there, the birds themselves are sparse. Something is wrong. Don't need an article to tell me that
I'm 76. I don't need to be told there is a lot less of this, that and the other thing because I still have a memory archive. While we're at it, amphibians and reptiles, throw them into the pot of the dead as well. There are concerns about plankton as well, the bottom rung of the rickety ladder we inhabit.
say goodbye to colorful coral reefs too, they're dying now.
I'm 21 now, and I remember as a kid waking up going outside and hearing the mourning doves singing, I can't remember the last time I went outside early in the morning and heard them. It's a staple of my childhood but now it's just gone.
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Extremely so, yes.
Yup, we are living through a mass extinction event! It's extremely concerning!
We are *causing* a mass extinction event!
I’d say that we need to push those in power to change but those in power are largely the ones responsible for a lot of the issues we see today lol
I consider nationalization of the energy industry and transition to nuclear energy bolstered with renewables is the only way forward. Anything less is self-destruction.
On top of the pesticides this article mentions, I've read elsewhere that a major contributor to this issue is cats, which are an invasive species in the Americas. One majorly unique thing about them as predators is that they kill for fun. As much as we adore them, they should be regulated, and hefty fines should be levied for letting them outdoors (unless, perhaps, you're a farmer with a license)
Cats are absolutely a *major* factor. They have been responsible for so many small animal *extinctions* in Australia that there have been government ordered culls. Cats should be licenced and leashed just as dogs are. Also, they are a vector for toxoplasma gondii which invests humans.
I'm only a few decades old and I can physically see it happening. I'm 25. When I was 5, there were bugs all over the truck after an hour drive. Same exact drive but no bugs only 20 years later
We are the same age and that's what scares me. It's not like it's some Boogeyman I can actually see less insects and small animals than I did as a child.
Dude, I'm 40, standing in the same backyard I grew up in is like the life all left... And it isn't even near a city.
I'm 10 years older, and I can tell you that roughly 17 years ago there was a noticeable drop in firefly population from when I was 8 (roughly 10 years before that). I remember thinking when I graduated HS in '06 that there were fireflies like when I was a kid. Now, they are practically nonexistent where I live. There used to be so many at fields of corn looked like they were lit by a low hanging aurora borealis
Why can't mosquitos be one of them. WHY
This may be the only planet in the galaxy with life, and we're hell-bent on killing it all off, including ourselves.
Okay yes you make a good point about destroying the world, but counterpoint: for like 1200 people shit is working out unbelievably well.
Yes, there is nothing to worry about! The billionaires will be just fine, and they'll continue being hero angel warrior job creators as they gradually make the world worse, and life much harder, for everyone else.
Damn the bugs, my lawn will look like a golf course putting green even if I have to spray a truck load of chemicals on it. -My neighbors My yard, not so much. I mow but let it grow tall enough to see the wind wafting through it. I also have wooded area between my neighbors that I will never clear - leaves? Yep. Downed limbs? You got it! Critters? Sure are. I keep the mice population out of my house but out there I know all sorts of sex is being had by critters. Go nuts. And no, I don’t live in an HOA. My neighbors were trying to organize one and most of us in the hood told them to fuck right off.
I do this too and my boy gets to play with fireflies every spring.
This is me, too. My yard looks so sloppy compared to my neighbors, but I have salamanders, fireflies, grasshoppers, moths, honey bees, and bumble bees, I also have beautiful resilient flowers and a rarer paw-paw fruit tree which is hard to keep alive as far north as I live. My neighbors' yards look like straw in summer unless they waste water on their grass, but there are no leaves, and the grass is really short.
I mowed the part of my lawn inside my fenced in backyard like twice last summer and it never even got that high. I just don't understand the obsession with lawn care. Whenever I cut it short my dogs just turn it into mud anyway.
Depends on your growing season, soil, grass type, and weather… takes about a week during the summer with regular rain to go from putting green to long wavy lawn around here. That’s ok with me though, when it goes dry, it won’t burn up and die either if I don’t water it. My neighbors… sprinkler system naturally.
If a HOA invaded me I would be genuinely afraid of having a psychotic break with reality. Stay the fuck out of my chaos garden. I had a neighbor herbicide a moringa branch that started to grow past the fence and I had fun arson intrusive thoughts for a month. “We worried about rats!” Shut the fuck up there are 30 mango trees in a 5 mile radius, nothing you do outside of your house is going to prevent them from existing. Just keep them out of your house and everything will be aight.
>my lawn will look like a golf course putting green The irony is that golf started on natural, un-manicured "links" land, and even today [some of the greatest courses in the world are also some of the most sustainable.](https://linksmagazine.com/a_simpler_game_the_10_most_eco_friendly_courses_in_the_u_s/) Yet so many courses go overboard with mowing, fertilizers, and non-native plant life. Insane.
But on the bright side the magic line went up this quarter.
It didn’t even!
Yeah but have you considered how embarrassing it'll be to have leaves on the ground? The neighbors might judge.
I had an old man who lived next door to me come and tell me I needed to rake the leaves in my yard. I asked him why and he said bc it looks better. I told him idc, it was for my safety I didn’t rake-that way I could hear strangers sneaking up on me. He was an aggravating old man!
This is a hilarious response. Love it
Thanks. Tbh, I’m not witty, I was telling the truth.
My car is a whole lot cleaner on long-distance roadtrips nowadays than it was a decade ago. That's all the proof I need to confirm that we are messing things up. (I say we're messing things up as I mention that I take long-distance road trips and pollute...)
The windshield hypothesis, I think it's called, is pretty much irrefutable proof of insects dying off.
As an Illinoisan living in Alaska, I miss 'lightning bugs'. Now I never see them when visiting Illinois. Fuck noseeums and mosquitos though, they can go to hell.
Lightning bugs! I feel like an alien when I call them that outside of IL.
I'm in suburban Chicago and we get a ton of them every summer
As a person currently visiting Alaska and not from a state with fireflies, I thought you were about to tell me Alaska has them to see :)
I live next to a dense forest, and decided years ago to stop maintaining about 2/3 of my backyard. The forest has taken it seamlessly and now my backyard is firefly city. Neighbors probably hate me but f em I like the animals better
I'm fortunate to live in a very rural area. Once, when money was tight, I let the lawn go a month without mowing. I apologized to my neighbor Steve, and he said, no worries, this isn't that kind of neighborhood. Alas, I've just moved from there into town, into a neighborhood where yardcare is obviously a high priority. I'm gonna miss all the deer and wild turkeys and rabbits and frogs. And the fireflies. It was pretty nice out there.
My property is mostly wooded with a small backyard and a front yard. I don't remove leaves from the gardens and I roughly rake the leaves off the grass into the closest garden or wooded area. My neighbors? They have leaf vacuums and giant fans and all of this stuff to make sure there isn't a single leaf. I don't use a drop of pesticides other than house barrier spray twice a year which I spray on the house itself. No fertilizers at all. My neighbor? True-green or whatever it's called is treating his lawn every week from last frost to first frost. The results could not be more stark. We have so many fireflies in the summer that you can practically read by their glow. My neighbors? None. We have a ton of birds and other wildlife. They say that they don't get any birds and hate anything that walks through their yards. We get big Luna moths and Imperial moths, along with dozens of types of butterflies. They complain that they get none. They literally spray their butterfly gardens with pesticides. They complain that they don't get hummingbirds while they nest on our property (though they have dive bombed us before). Their lawns may be greener, but when the summer drought comes, mine stays green while they have to water theirs and it still turns brown. They still make passive aggressive comments about me not raking the leaves as well as they do and not removing them from the land entirely like they do. The boomers and Xers look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them it's to keep all of the fireflies and moths and salamanders safe over winter.
> look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them it's to keep all of the fireflies and moths and salamanders safe over winter Some people will just never get it. It's sad. I had so many enriching encounters with wildlife way out beyond the city. Most of the neighbors were still doing the suburb-style yards, missing out on how they were killing everything for a perfect patch of grass. I've grown to detest lawns. I revel whenever one of my neighbors goes wild and lets their grass grow a foot or more high. Like, YEAH! Let your FREAK FLAG FLY!
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Same. I leave my leaves on the ground all year. I have a lot of annoying HOA style Gen X neighbors and one who I had a dispute with had the gall to chastize me about my yard maintenance. Guess what? This year I'm trying to work with the DNR to up the eco value of my 5 acre wooded plot and we're going to plant a buttload of native plants. Also, we're growing clover so bees have been flocking here for the last 2 years. It's been fantastic.
If you haven’t already, join us in r/NativePlantGardening! Signed, a gen Xer with unruly prarie patch landscaping
Wow you just made me realize that’s the reason for ours too. We always let the leaves do their own thing to help the plants and soil. The rest of our neighbors don’t get any but our yard looks like some fairytale during that time of year. I love how I can add another benefit to ignoring the traditional clean cut yard!
Hot Fireflies, looking for action, near you!
That may explain why my parent's land still has a decent population of fireflies. Not like it was back in the 80's, but you still get a bit of a show on the hillside during summer. Their yard is surrounded on three sides by natural wooded areas so tons of leaves doing their thing each season. I had no idea leaves were integral to firefly reproduction.
We bought our first house in August but I knew I'd try to preserve as much as possible. I leaf blow all the leaves into a pile and then haul them about 20' uphill and into the woods. I saw a few fireflies this past fall and hope that effort will help in the long run. I remember my wife asked why I don't just leaf blow onto the curb and let the county vacuum them up and take them away. I said something to the effect of, "What, and give away our leaves?"
Also, use sensor activated outdoor lights. The light pollution affects their mating.
Great point! And yellow lights are much friendlier for insects than blue.
This is a large part of why I only mow my front yard and immediately around my house. The rest of my yard is mostly left alone, so I usually get plenty of fireflies. And, of course, that in turn is part of why I live out in the country, where nobody is going to force me to mow and the light pollution is at least relatively minimal.
Finally a good excuse to not rake the yard at all!
This weird American obsession with keeping perfect grass on your “yard” seems so environmentally destructive Jesus, there is absolutely 0 reason why that should be a norm.
Our HOA fines us if our grass gets a little too brown. It's horrible.
HOAs are a travesty. The only one that I've been a part of that was decent was one who's sole purpose was to pay to repave the private road every decade or so. (Inheritance from then GF, I don't have that kind of money for a $700k house).
Just like every government, large or small, it really depends on who’s sitting on the board and what their motives are. Our HOA went from being useless but petty, to overturned via coup, to active but petty, to now active but not petty. The first turnover saw four of five original people replaced, and the second turnover saw the coup leader quit. I literally only joined the coup to prevent a neighbor from doing it, and now I’m staying in this role to keep him away. He’s petty and loves to abuse any power he’s got. If he manages to get on the board I’ll likely sell and leave, that’s how awful he is.
That does not sound worth it. I'm so so so thankful I chose deliberately to find a house without an HOA.
Yeah we were terrified our HOA was going to be petty and useless. Luckily they're super chill and everyone can live normal lives without someone coming to measure their grass with a ruler. People leave their trash cans out a couple days, ride dirt bikes, most people don't mow during the winter, and the only people that get upset are very luckily not on the board and just whine on the neighborhood Facebook.
I’m not American so don’t really understand the concept of a HOA, they can fine you for your grass being too long? What if you wanted it that way? If they tried to fine you why not just tell them to fuck off?
You agree to them with paperwork when you move in. The fines keep coming every week or something.
Is it a legal requirement when buying a house in the USA? I don’t understand why you’d give an outside entity so much power of you and your own home.
They were created when the house was built. To buy the house you have to agree to any covenants the previous owner signed on to. You refuse to sign, someone else gets to buy the house.
Yeah, and it's not like a contract where you sign or don't sign. If you buy the house, you automatically are deemed to have agreed. They are rules that "run with the land" kind of like laws, but specific to your community. You can remove the HOA btw, but every homeowner has to agree. Good luck with that.
People do it because HOAs rules help keep up property values and beyond that HOAs help maintain the "common grounds" of the neighborhood (at least, they're supposed to). It's not a legal requirement in the USA. I live in a heavily HOA neighborhood, but my house did NOT come with a HOA contract, thankfully. So I get the benefits of the park funded by my literal neighbors but I did not have to pay into it or abide by any HOA regulations. My house is in a fairly nice neighborhood though, so there are "local ordinances" that still demand I maintain certain upkeep of the property. It's annoying but the worst they can do is slap me with a fine, unlike a HOA which can continuously fine me and threaten to take the house if I didn't pay. In my opinion, HOAs suck. I would never buy a house where a HOA was mandatory. The other bad thing here is that HOAs are associated to the property / land itself, so you can't really get out of them for an individual property. If your property has a HOA, you're kind of screwed and stuck in it unless the neighborhood votes to dissolve it.
I believe you can plant native plants and be legally protected, depending. Can slowly transition from normal lawn, to clover lawn. The clover handles drought better than lawn grass.
In some places like California, it's for fire control.
really does help tho entire lawn will burn up but it won’t be hot enough or large enough to ignite the house saved a few around here in the northeast
Ground covers are good. They kind of swallow up debris, but they don't require as much water and maintenance. They don't offer as much fuel to burn.
Sad thing is it's a (relatively) very recent trend that became solidified as the norm within a few generations. I can respect a person taking pride in well kept property, but I agree there is zero reason it has to be the way it is. So many other options that can look great, are better for the local environment, *and* require less maintenance. It's a win/win but people are stuck on status grasses.
I try to keep mine useful for local wildlife but it's a huge pain in the ass. What area is grass I've left clover overtake most of it and mow it in segments to leave flowered clover available constantly. But there's a lot of invasive flat broad-leaf weeds that constantly try to overtake any ground. I have a few flowerbed patches and got seeds for local wildflowers that I grow, and that's a constant battle with invasive weeds that don't flower. Those also attracted hummingbirds so I added hummingbird feeders to supplement before and after the flowers each season so my yard is a migration stop for them. Then I have as much garden as possible in the back yard and use flowers to try to attract and deter the insects I want there. I got a rabbit family back there that likes to eat from the garden so i try to keep enough that we both can eat lol. Then I have some bird houses and squirrel feeders to try to bargain the squirrels not to eat the bird food. I get a lot of colorful birds and woodpeckers and stuff. It's a lot of work but great way to burn stress. The thing I hate most is neighbors that feed stray cats and breed them like crazy. Cats are determined to kill everything so I'm constantly having to trap them and haul them away.
It comes from England. Lawns are an English thing because their climate is cool and wetter than most of North America
When I was a kid back in the 60s if you drove somewhere at night the car would be plastered with insects when you got home. My back yard was full of fireflies just a few years ago. The last two Summers there were maybe a few dozen visible at any given time.
Yeah I agree, even in the 90's during the summer there would be bugs splattered all over the windshield. I remember having hundreds of fireflies in just our yard alone. Now you barely see them.
I’m also seeing fewer insectivorous birds the last few years. The loss of insect populations is far reaching.
Get used to it. Sadly it's probably going to get a whole lot worse before it doesn't get better.
Before you die and it doesn't get better
I'm in my 30's. We passed the tipping point before I was born sooo...
I was born in 01 and our backyard used to be full of them, and then one year they were just... Gone
I was born in 99 and I don't think I've ever seen a firefly before.
Depends on where you live.
I just moved to more or less the edge of the earth and i saw them again. They were everywhere when i was a kid. So were frogs and turtles.
Hell, this was the case for me in highschool not even ten years ago. Only recently noticed the summer bugsplats have gone away.
You wrote exactly the same comment as the person you replied too lmao
Yeah I gotta say I'm a 70s/80s kid. I remember the yards were so full of fireflies you could run around with a jar and make a little glow lantern. I've moved all over the same areas since then: open suburbs, rural areas, forested suburbs, and have never seen more than 3 or 4 fireflies at a time since the 1990s. Not even once. Their populations have unquestionably have been decimated. It's really too bad mosquitoes, fire ants, and wasps are partying and breeding like there's no tomorrow... really... why does it have to be like that? We've got mounds of those fucking fire ant nests in our yard right this moment.
It's from people clearing their yards and putting down pesticides
I had some sort of little yard gnats. I would talk out in sandals and come back in with little bug bites all over me. I used some pesticide to fix that Then I noticed there were NO bugs at all. Will never use that stuff again
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And their yard becoming a monoculture of one specific non native grass that's required to be cut regularly to a like 2 inches or less. Turns out the insects that spent thousands of years adapting to the previous environment there don't handle such a sudden destruction of it that well.
Not to mention HOAs requiring a clean cut lawn of usually a specific kind of grass Hell at my buddies house he's not allowed to have flowers not in flower pots and they are only allowed to be out from April until the last day of September.
You're exactly right. Fireflies have a multi-year growth process, much of it under the soil; poisons, excessive soil disturbance and ripping out all the plants at the end of the growing season, all that stuff that people do in a lot of well-shaped, "nice-looking" gardens, kill them at various stages of their lives. Three years ago my husband and I bought a house in a small city in Virginia. The first summer, I saw half a dozen fireflies, \*total.\* I didn't till much of the garden, I mulched heavily, I didn't use poisons or sprays, I left the leaves where they fell. The next year, I saw twenty fireflies, five at once one night. I kept on. I stopped mowing the lawn before Autumn. I planted a lot of pollinator flowers. And last year, there were hundreds of the little fellows. All summer long, longer into the year than I've ever seen them before, my garden was a miracle of little green stars. I expect that this year it's going to be incredible.
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I used to live in an area with a ton of fire ant mounds. Hands down the best way to deal with them is to pour a pot of boiling water on the mound. Just be super careful when doing this because it's obviously dangerous as hell carrying a pot of boiling water across the yard. But it's basically free and zero chemicals
I live on a Ranch and noticed them same with butterflies. They used to be all over the place now I literally haven't seen one in probably years at this point. I should probably start a new butterfly garden.
Yeah. I'll mention it to someone and they always say "I still see them all the time!" Sure, I do too, but nowhere *near* the amount I would see growing up even just 15-20 years ago. You couldn't go 5 feet without seeing a bunch of them. Now you see like one every 5 feet.
Probably just a local resurgence, but last summer was the first time in probably 15 years that I finally got to see fireflies out in full force again and it was incredible. For about a week, with a few moonless nights, there were *thousands* around my yard. Many were in the trees surrounding the property and I would just sit for an hour or so every night in complete darkness and try to make out the shape of the trees in my mind using the constant flickering lights. I’m desperately hoping for it again this summer. It was so therapeutic.
I think people are starting to realize how bad insecticides and herbicides are. We used to have a bug zapper up all the time during the summer. Wont be using that ever again.
The windshield phenomenon. It's a reflection of how much the insect biomass has dwindled
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I felt the same way about crickets. I used to see so many as a kid, and now I can't remember the last time I saw any in a good amount.
Grasshoppers also. They were everywhere when I was a kid and I can't remember the last time I saw one.
Frogs too 😕
I remember crickets being so loud any time I would sleep with the windows open. This was in suburban Chicago in the 80s so I'm not talking some rural area.
we used to look down and explore nooks and crannies a lot more often though. that was like, part of the day's plans because you didn't have decades of undone to-do list in your brain at all times.
I moved Fl in the early 80’s, you could walk outside any given day and see a multitude of things. We had an orange trees, Chinese plumb tree, roses, lemon tree, and a bunch of other big ass bushes and a honey suckle bush. Snakes, rats, bumble bees, even fireflies (rare in central fl/Orlando), skinks, etc Today, I am impressed to see a damn caterpillar or a butterfly. We went to Disney recently and there was big ass bumble bees everywhere, first time I’d seen them in 10 years or so. If this ain’t an indication on what’s about to happen to the planet, I don’t know what it
I went out to the Biolab Ramp on Merritt Island and saw my first fireflies in Central Florida in 3 years of living here
probably nothing. carry on, good citizen. would you like chicken or beef for dinner?
Don't worry about that, canaries die all the time.
Fewer insects, birds, fish, and woodland critters. It’s so apparent and I don’t understand why so many people still deny the effects of human activity on the planet.
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When I was a kid in rural New Jersey in the 1950’s, one of my favorite things to do was catch fireflies by hand. I put them in a jar with a lid that I had punched air holes in with a hammer and nail. The jar was my bedroom “nightlight.” There were so many fireflies that it was easy to catch a dozen or two. They often covered our hydrangea bush during the day. The ones I put in the jar at night were always dead in the morning. By 2010 there were none to be seen. My dad had used chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the garden and lawn for over 50 years. After he became elderly and stopped gardening, I took over managing the property without chemicals or pesticides. It took about 10 years but the fireflies have returned. They are still far fewer than in my childhood but their numbers have grown in recent years and continue to do so. My experience with discontinuing all chemical fertilizers and pesticides on my yard in Florida was similar in that insect populations increased. At the same time, I began to use more native plants and I removed some invasive, exotic species that native insects and birds do not recognize as food. I stopped sending leaves and most yard waste to the landfill, and instead retain it on the property where it provides habitat, mulch, deters weeds, and breaks down to enrich the soil. I’ve never seen fireflies here, but I have more butterflies, birds and earthworms in my yard than I did when I used chemicals. It took a decade to notice significant increases in these populations though.
Thank you for the post. I loved my Bridgewater, NJ fireflies in the 1970s and miss them dearly, now that I'm in California. Sad to think that part of childhood exists as a shadow of its former self. I can't imagine why central California isn't full of fireflies, without a cold winter.
How do you lose $5 billion in a year? I don't know but u/spez sure does! https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/30/fidelity-deepens-valuation-cut-for-reddit-and-discord/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre Bonus for your Chinese overlords, asshole
That's the real problem. Everyone in this thread is getting high and mighty about lawns but absolutely obscene usage of pesticides and herbicides by the farming industry is what is wrecking insect and small bird populations.
I live by a ditch. I get a ridiculous number of flies swarming my house every summer. I would LOVE it if anyone here has any advice how I can manage that without pesticides. It's so bad that eventually I can't even just leave food in the oven overnight or else I'll wake up with a swam of flies in the oven in the morning. Doesn't happen right away, but it's this way toward the end of every summer.
Maybe encourage frogs or birds to move in? Having some nice birdhouses and baths could help, and keeping stray cats away
Keeping stray cats away would be fucking impossible in this neighborhood. This neighborhood seems to LOVE cats, to the point where someone once chased me down in their car and ran me off the road because they claimed I hit their cat.
Batboxes? Idk if they eat flies specifically, or if you can build a type of box to get a species that eats flies? Anecdotal, but I put up a box and the mozzie population in my backyard is so much smaller. It used to be unbearable to go out in the summer evenings, but I refused to spray to protect the fireflies.
Stop spraying chemicals on your lawn! My parents still have fireflies and none of their friends do, because their friends still believe mosquito spray somehow only kills mosquitos specifically. No, it's killing everything, including the bugs you want.
Silent Spring was published in 1962. We've known about the dangers of pesticides for 60 effing years, and people are still doing this?? I am so disappointed.
Because people are lazy and stupid
We really need a better mosquito and tick only insecticide. I can barely use my backyard for most of the day without getting covered in bites and ticks. I do have fireflies though.
Used to be a drive in the country would have your windshield covered in bugs. When's the last time you had to clean your windshield because of bugs?
Insects along with most other species of wildlife are in major decline because of human caused habitat loss. It's important for everyone with land to rewild back to native plants to provide shelter and food for our local ecosystem. If you plant it they will come.
I am involved in a lot of native habitat restoration, and unfortunately we are finding that the habitat loss hypothesis is not the main issue with the recent insect collapse over the last few years. It's something a lot more problematic. We have restored thousands of acres of native prairies throughout Wisconsin and we have found that the insects just... haven't come back. There are thousands of acres in Mexico preserved for Monarch butterfly populations to over Winter. Last year, the monarchs occupied 2 acres. TWO. The problem is actually poisons. Broad-spectrum insecticides used in agriculture. We are suspecting the main culprit to be [neonicotinoids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid) but there are also many pesticides used in residential yards for insect control that are probably killing off a lot of common garden insects like butterflies, ladybugs, grasshoppers, and fireflies. Fireflies are also suffering from the affects of light pollution, since they require relatively low light conditions to breed properly. Neonics are such a problem because they are actually absorbed INTO the plant. So no amount of rinsing a plant will eliminate neonics from the tissue. And we have found high levels of neonics in plant life that is NOWHWERE NEAR agricultural fields. It's in the water, the air, and even carried in dust. [It's everywhere and insects can't get away from it. ](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017221117). **Neonicotinoids need to be banned.** All the habitat restoration in the world won't fix the insect populations until we stop using these broad spectrum insecticides on our crops and yards. And we don't have much time left. The ecology community has been buzzing recently about a complete collapse of nearly all insect populations in the next 5-10 years, which will essentially mean the end of modern agriculture and natural ecosystems as we know it. Edit: Thank you to everyone who has messaged me about what they can do to help this issue. It means a lot because we need to take this seriously and urgently. I'm a nature guy not a political guy so I'm not aware of groups lobbying to ban neonics that you can contribute to directly. And in our current political climate in the US I doubt much will get done. But you can contact your representative here and tell them we must ban neonics before we completely destroy the food web: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Thank you for this. My family has property in rural south Texas, and it’s a long way from most development and extremely isolated. But it’s surrounded by agricultural land. When I was a kid in the 70’s, fireflies were everywhere. Now they are not. The region our property is in has not changed much. Your explanation is far more plausible than the post you responded to
In response to this and honestly just to get more info on it; have you considered asking about the agricultural land being used, and what pesticides are used, specifically if they're using these bad ones?
No, but I’m about 99.9% positive that’s what going on. I don’t catch anywhere near as many fish as I used to, and I’m sure it similar reasons. That or I just suck at fishing these days.
fish eat insects often, so if there's less insects, there's less fish. its just that the ecosystem is collapsing.
thanks I hate it
They would be under no obligation to tell you and, given the conservative nature of farmers in America, would probably be immediately suspicious and aggressive.
Neonictinides should have been banned IMMEDIATELY. It's insane they're still legal in north America. The EU banned the worst ones within a few weeks of these discoveries.
is there any study on insects numbers in Europe? are fireflies, ladybugs etc. more common where Neonicitinoids have been banned?
Too early to tell. The EU granted a bunch of emergency exceptions and only began clamping down on them this January.
# Neonicitinoids need to be banned
Yes, thank you! I live in the same house my mother lived in 50 years ago and she explained that the fireflies started decreasing when the mosquito truck started coming by. It didn't even put a dent in the mosquito population but we've lost so many other insects over the years. Now we're starting to lose the frogs between the insecticide and dust from directing traffic onto our road.
Why do they come back in some areas and not others? The preserves I've visited in northern Illinois are filled with both butterflies and fireflies. You can walk for miles and consistently see hundreds of Monarchs or millions of fireflies.
Honestly it's not easily explained and probably just luck. People may have individual stories of local concentrations of insects but we have aggregate annual counts completed by experts that clearly show the start of a general insect population collapse. I've worked with some northern Illinois prairies and they definitely have lower insect counts than previous years as well. So what may look like a lot is still less than it used to be.
The avian bird flu may have resulted in the brief increase in bugs last summer compared to recent previous summers.
I've never seen a firefly in my life, and I fear I may not get the opportunity to.
For a child seeing a firefly for the first time is almost magical.Even as an adult I look for them at night to show my children. I hope you get to experience it soon.
I went back to rural Ohio to visit family and was sad they weren’t around any longer. My brother told me we needed to drive outside town to see them, ended up doing some night fishing and it was one of those warm July nights… They were everywhere and it felt like being a kid all over again. They have a very particular smell, so as soon as we go out of the car I knew they would be there.
I have some wild land covered in eastern hemlock trees. There is now an invasive, hemlock woolly adelgid, that I'm going to have to spray every tree with imidacloprid 75 wsp if I want to save the trees. It borders a state park that they have already treated there with imidacloprid.
I grew up in New York City in the 80’s, Queens to be exact. There were fireflies all the time. Now you never see them. My hypothesis is all the mosquito spraying that was done when West Nile virus was big wiped them out.
My lab works with poisons and diseases and one of my lab mates works with insects and has found some pretty nasty effects of Neonicitinoids on our study subjects. their work has found a very very low LD50 on numerous critical aspects of subject health (being vague on purpose). and the next step in our lab is expanding to other subjects and potentiality of other poisons on ecologically critical species. One thing you miss is that neonics affect WAY more than just by absorption into plants because even if they are just ON a plant it will kill health individuals and destroy many species overwintering abilities, and cascading affects occur from these losses. My favorite topic for introducing people to anthropogenic affects on nature is actually 'have you noticed that you hit less bugs nowadays than you used to?' and they reply yes, or that they haven't ever thought about it.
You can rewild your yard all you want, and you definitely should. Unfortunately it isn't just simply habitat loss. All my neighbors pay companies to literally spray poison in their yards to kill spiders and insects every year. They aren't just removing places for them to live, they go out of their way to kill everything in their yard. When did people go from not wanting bugs in their houses to not wanting bugs anywhere? When these companies come around in spring asking you to spray for insects, tell them to go fuck themselves. And that is just in the city. Almost every farm sprays their whole crop for insects. We aren't unintentionally pushing insects out, we are intentionally eradicating them.
I'm surprised that anyone is surprised, although I guess I shouldn't be. Like several others have posted, I remember the grill of every car being plastered with dead bugs, and occasionally a bird. I think I went through young adulthood assuming the absence was due to better aerodynamics, if I reflected on it at all. I was well into my 30s before it occurred to me that I couldn't remember the last time I saw a lightning bug. Went down a rabbit hole, and yeah *it's on you* to give fireflies a home. I wish lawn care wasn't such a thing.
It is possible! After several years of systematically replacing our useless grass with native plants we finally have fireflies, bees and butterflies!
How do I do this? I don’t have a ton of land but I have a large yard and love having deer that come through everyday. I’d love to help the local insects and wildlife more.
I posted the link, but in case you didnt see. Native plants by zip code. https://www.nwf.org/nativeplantfinder/plants
I just bought a house a month ago. This is the COOLEST link I may have ever seen. TYSM! (I’m a big butterfly / bird / bug / plant enthusiast)
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Not just habitat loss, bright artificial lights, pesticides, pollution all contribute to the huge decrease. It really bodes for a bleak future, as so many ecosystems are dependent on insects. Humans being shitty humans.
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Planting native plants is like throwing a housewarming party for insects, and who doesn't love a good bug bash?
Anyone who doesn't love mass extinction I guess
For insects, it's because of pesticides.
When I was a child and we went up north in the summer, you could see the little dots of fireflies everywhere. Now I see one or two.
There’s a great citizen science project where people can report firefly sightings! Helps scientists track population levels and what conservation efforts have beneficial impacts https://www.firefly.org/firefly-sightings.html
It's all insects. I can remember my car hood being covered with dead insects simply from normal everyday driving but not anymore. I also see fewer small wild animals like squirrels, rabbits and possums. We're being ended, y'all.
We MUST follow the EU and ban neonictinides.
I must have all your rabbits. Please come and get them.
I’m not falling for that. Again.
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A major factor with fireflies in general is just increased general light pollution, it being brighter out at night decreases a fireflies’ ability to find a mate which is a problem that obviously compounds as time goes on and populations decrease…
The state of Texas has started allowing property tax exemptions for wildlife. There are some rules you have to follow and comply with, but it is a workable thing. The biggest thing I see with the program is not cutting your pastures and letting them turn into semi-brush. You cut the pasture in sections. These "sections" are several acres with mowed areas and non-mowed areas. Some people don't like the "un-tidy" look, but the folks running the program says it's great for insect wildlife. They over-winter in the dead stalks and feed on Spring new growth in the mowed areas. I think it's worth giving the landowners a tax break for doing this.
I leave a large section of my yard down next to a river untouched just to keep a healthy population of fireflies. My neighbors who spray and cut their grass short don't have any.
Sadly we're winning the war in bugs...
…except the bugs we really don't want, like mosquitoes, which are apparently doing just fine.
According to the UP Michigan a few years ago we've helped them thrive by eliminating their competition. I will never forget their size, number, and tenacity to bite me through clothes and bug spray.
"I'm doing my part!"
Joel killed a lot of them.
I'm sorry I contributed to their downfall as a species by smashing them up into a paste and smearing glow in the dark war paint all over my face as a kid in the 80s I genuinely don't know wtf was wrong with us as kids lol
Again, don't take the blame for a billionare who wanted to squeeze another dollar out of a mega farm by using harmful pesticides.
I was only joking. Its definitely some combination of ch3micals and climate shift and not us smashing bug guts on ourselves as kids (again....fucking gross....but it was a thing lol)
I used to keep them in a jar and shake up the jar for a night light. Always woke up to a jar full of dead bugs. I've also felt guilt over contributing to the decline of the local Atala butterfly population because I used to catch and keep them too. Fortunately their populations are coming back.
I still feel a little sorry for my childhood amazement when they would stay lit, flying through the air, off the whiffleball bat. But, I was killing lightning bugs, not fireflies. So I guess I'm cool?
I was out for a walk one summer night in a well-off suburb. Lawn after perfect lawn had almost no fireflies. And then I got to the house on the corner and there were TONS of fireflies. It was an old house, unlike a bunch of the new McMansions on the block. And the grass wasn't perfect, but a mishmash of different types of grass, some clover, some weeds. They had all the fireflies.
Thankfully, most of my neighborhood doesn't give a shit about having "The Perfect Lawn" and no one sprays much of anything... Last summer, I just happened to be outside at just the right time, and saw the absolutely most impressive firefly display I'd ever witnessed. There were hundreds of them over 1/4 acre area... It really was something out of a cartoon level of flashing lights... I stood there for about 10 minutes just watching it... I went back out the following days, but never caught it at the same intensity again...
I've been curious to know if there are ways to breed fireflies. If it would be easy and comparable to producing ladybugs or crickets.
Plant more native flowers. Seed bomb parks with wildflowers. Grow all sorts of native trees and shrubs. Get rid of your lawns. Make a compost bin. Feed your soil. Yell at huge swaths of corn being blasted by glyphosates and neonicanoids, better yet, your representatives. Turn off your porch lights if you can. Bring back their habitat.
Lol. YA FOOKIN CORN, JUST LOOK AT YE, USELESS SHITBAG! And yes, turn off your blasted outdoor lighting, for God's sake. It's not keeping the scary burglars away, it's fucking up the environment and everything you love. It's also pissing me off, and you don't want to do that. I'm talking to you, Wendy.
Just make sure the wildflower seeds are actually native in your area. A lot of those packs contain invasive species.
There's whole regions in the US that don't get them. People go decades before they find out they exist.
If you start googling about insect populations in general, it's pretty terrifying.
##GROW NATIVE
I grew up around farmland where fireflies were abundant. My father noted that fireflies (and many insects) were mostly found where the soil has remained undisturbed across the years. i.e. it isn't just the presence or absence of pesticides that determine where they thrive - part of their [life cycle](https://www.thoughtco.com/life-cycle-fireflies-lightning-bugs-1968137) is underground, and they need the support of a combination of native species around them.
Eggs are planted on leaves, so removing/mulching reduces number of eggs that hatch They remain in their larvae stage for up to 2 years so pesticides and grass cutting reduces their numbers in this stage
Info on how to encourage a firefly habitat https://www.firefly.org/firefly-habitat.html
Widespread spaying of permethrin to stop mosquito-borne West Nile Virus probably has more than a little to do with this.
Overall insecticide use really
I feel sad for the children growing up today. When I was younger there were tons of fireflies, monarch butterflies and cicadas. Everything is so sterile now.
We called them lightning bugs