Losing the nightlights

 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which still exists as I write this, is proposing to list the Bethany Beach firefly as 'threatened'. It's the first firefly to be listed, if it happens.

I've been to Bethany Beach a few times. It's a nice place, a couple miles south of Rehoboth. I didn't know it had a firefly named after it, though.

So, as the article notes, like many other fireflies, its population is declining, for a lot of combined reasons that becomes more powerful as extinction pathways when combined. So the difficult problem is reducing their impact.

(This article is a bit old; I'm trying to address some backlog.)

This firefly delighted beachgoers. Now it’s flickering out of existence.

"Discovered in 1949, the Bethany Beach firefly is distinct from other fireflies for its telltale black head marking and its double flash of green light. Though named after the coastal Delaware town where it was discovered, the firefly also shines in low-lying marshes called swales along the shores of Maryland and Virginia.

But today, rising tides and stronger storms fueled by a human-induced climate change are poised to wash through those freshwater marshes as well as the coastal dunes that protect them. According to climate models, up to 95 percent of those low wetlands may be lost to high-tide flooding by the end of the century.

“These more severe storm events like we saw in Florida” are threatening the firefly, Slacum said, referring to the deadly Hurricane Helene, which made landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast last week. “Over the next 30 or 50 years, a lot of these swales are probably going to be underwater.”

Meanwhile, booming coastal development — and the steady glare from buildings and streetlamps that come with it — is beginning to outshine the insect, which courts its potential mates by flashing. Even the blinking lights from airplanes and broadcast towers can confuse fireflies."

Here's the Bethany Beach firefly, doing what it's known for.