Their decline has been so sad. I moved somewhere with fireflies in 2007. The first year they were everywhere. The second year less so and they were completely gone by 2010. I always tried to leave longer grassy areas for them but they were just… gone. It was so so so sad. I didn’t grow up with them and that first summer was enchanted and magical.
I have great memories of walking down the road on a hot night with thousands of slowly blinking balls of light. The person who lives in that place now probably doesn’t even know that fireflies are supposed to be in the area.
Lightning bugs have a multi-year lifecycle that includes living in fallen leaf matter, hunting for other bugs, before emerging in like 2-3 years. So they need places that don’t haul away all of the fallen leaves/plant matter or use broad spectrum pesticides.
I’ve always kept all the leaves in rows along our fences for the lightning bugs to live in, which is also popular with the song birds hunting for bugs. That and don’t do the broad pesticide treatments.
It seems insane to me that Americans use pesticides on their own garden and lawn. Do you not walk on there? have your kids and pets play outside? What are you even trying to kill with the poison?
How do you make your lawn a color of green that doesn’t exist in nature? Checkmate, Eurotrash.
it’s called “plants other than grass” and works really well, most swedish lawns remain green for most of the year and require jackshit care other than mowing every now and then.
How are these “plants other than grass” supposed to make TruGreen rich and cause algae blooms in the local waterways? You guys are so behind.
lightning bugs were cool.
Haven’t seen em in a while now that i think about it.
Because we killed them all. Pesticides, climate change, lawns… They’re dying out along with basically all bugs.
I have billions in my lawn. Just plant locals (guerilla style) and they’ll be back.
