AAmphawa is an hour’s drive southwest of Bangkok, Thailand, on a curve of the Mae Klong River. Until recently, tourists flocked here to see a spectacular evening light show. Thousands of male Pteroptyx malaccae fireflies gathered in the three-story mangrove trees that line the Mae Klong and flashed in sync. “It looks like a big Christmas tree with lots of little lights,” says Anchana Thancharoen, an entomologist at Kasetsart University in Thailand who has been working with fireflies for more than two decades.

The district government began promoting firefly tourism in Amphawa back in 2004. Within a few years, hundreds of motorboats were going up and down the river every night. New hotels, restaurants and streets transformed the “quiet, peaceful province into an urban area,” says Thancharoen. By 2014, the number of fireflies had decreased by about 80 percent due to light pollution and habitat loss, which almost obliterated the dazzling displays. Nowadays, most tourists visit Amphawa not for fireflies, but to buy groceries and souvenirs in the floating markets.

Insect festivals have increased tremendously, some of them are amazingly large.

—Glen Hvenegaard, University of Alberta

It’s a pattern that Thancharoen and other firefly researchers fear it could repeat itself as firefly-spotting popularity grows around the world. Thancharoen says she hopes Amphawa’s mistakes serve as a lesson for other sites looking to benefit from the local invertebrate fauna – before it’s too late.

Fireflies – or lightning bugs, depending on where they’re from – are actually beetles in the Lampyridae family. The green or yellow flickering is produced by a chemical reaction in light-generating organs, the lanterns, and is the elaborate courtship of insects. It is “the love language of fireflies,” explains Thancharoen. Although the females and larvae of some species produce light, it is usually the males who put on the most striking shows.

The practice of watching this spectacle has a long history in some countries like Japan, says Sara Lewis, an evolutionary ecologist at Tufts University who studies the sex life of fireflies. But in recent years, “firefly tourism seems to be really picking up speed, driven in part by the popularity of the pictures people take” and which are shared on social media, she says. The phenomenon is part of a larger trend in insect tourism – or entomotourism. “There has been tremendous growth in insect festivals, some of which are amazingly large,” says Glen Hvenegaard, an environmental scientist at the University of Alberta. Every year tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to monarch butterfly migration areas in Mexico, glowworm burrows in New Zealand and Australia, wool bear caterpillar festivals in the United States, and insectariums around the world.

STOPPING: Females of many species of fireflies are missing wings, making them particularly susceptible to trampling in areas with high levels of human activity.

RADIM SCHREIBER

Through interviews, polls, and internet research, Lewis, Thancharoen, and their colleagues recently quantified worldwide tourism for fireflies, especially. The researchers found that firefly tourist destinations are spread across 13 countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. At smaller locations like the Pennsylvania Firefly Festival, only about 1,000 people come to see Photinus carolinus performances, while some locations in Taiwan and South Korea attract up to 200,000 tourists each season. In 2013, around 51,000 tourists visited the tiny town of Nanacamilpa in southeastern Mexico to see the synchronous spectacle of Photinus palaciosi, which only takes place for two weeks each year. By 2019, that number had grown to over 120,000, says study co-author Tania López Palafox, a doctoral student in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at the Instituto de Ecología of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México who is working on it
this kind.

The researchers’ study is a “timely” effort to understand the threats to the beetles and promote sustainable practices, notes David Merritt, an entomologist at the University of Queensland who was not involved in the work. “It gives tourism managers and environmental managers something to work from,” he adds.

All in all, the researchers estimate that more than a million people traveled around the world in 2019 to observe fireflies. “That really knocked us off our feet,” says Lewis. “It’s great for the tourists – they get this amazing experience – and it’s great for the local communities, which in many cases are experiencing significant economic growth.” But tourism is not necessarily good for the beetles, which like many insects face globally are Rejects. “We’d like to make it a win-win-win, including a win for the fireflies,” she adds.

See Questions and Answers: Global Insect Declines Due to “Death from a Thousand Cuts

To ensure that firefly populations thrive even as tourist numbers grow, protecting fireflies at all stages of the insect life cycle is critical, say Lewis, Thancharoen, and their colleagues. In Amphawa, motor oil polluted the river and waves generated by ship traffic washed away the riverbanks, destroying the habitat for P. malaccae larvae. The researchers suggest that the tours use non-motorized or electric boats to minimize the impact on species with aquatic larvae. In locations with species that have subterranean larvae, visitors should stay on designated paths or sidewalks to avoid compaction of the soil and trampling of the insects.

The other major threat to the bioluminescent beetles at tourist attractions is light pollution, which disrupts firefly courtship and spoils their chances of dating, Thancharoen says. This means that artificial light from buildings, street lights and cars in firefly locations should be minimized and tourists should not use cell phones, flash photography and flashlights.

A long exposure image of male blue ghost fireflies (Phausis reticulata) taken in North Carolina

SPENCER BLACK

“We know enough about. . . the things fireflies need to survive to protect species from some of the threats associated with tourism, ”says Lewis. However, protecting the insects could be made more difficult by the social and economic factors that are unique to each location. In Amphawa, “there was a lot of conflict between what fireflies needed, what the local community needed, and what the tour operators did.” During the height of Amphawa’s popularity, 200 motorboats drove tourists up and down the river for hours each night, sometimes until midnight, which prompted a fed up resident to fell a firefly display tree, says Thancharoen. Although some locals have enjoyed economic benefits from tourists, many of the new businesses have been run by people outside the community.

To minimize this type of conflict and ensure that local residents benefit from firefly tourism, it is important to involve communities in the design, planning, and operation of tourist attractions, says study co-author Harvey Lemelin, a Social scientist at Lakehead University in Canada who says he got interested in insects after a dragonfly symposium. “I looked into those big, multi-faceted eyes. . . and I fell in love with her, ”he recalls. He says that “involving the locals in their stories, their narratives, their experiences, their traditional knowledge is an essential part”. [of sustainable tourism]. “By bringing in these perspectives, local tour guides can help make entomotourism not just a fun activity, but an experience that teaches visitors how to care for insects and protect them,” he says.

In Amphawa, Thancharoen and others have installed courses on biology and firefly protection and run training programs for tour operators, local residents and children. Now that few boat tours take tourists along the Mae Klong every night, the firefly populations are slowly rekindling, says Thancharoen. “Fireflies have started coming back.”