Where Have All the Fireflies Gone in Iowa? A Jones County Reflection

I grew up on a farm in Jones County, Iowa, where my summer nights used to glow with thousands of tiny lights. Back then, that was some 30-plus years ago, I couldn’t take a single step through the yard or fields without catching three or four lightning bugs. We’d fill jars with them, their glow bright enough to light up the jar for a few magical minutes. Summer nights felt like something out of a fairytale. But these days, it seems like those lights are fading, and fast.

Maybe you've noticed it too. Fewer flickers in the fields. Fewer laughing kids are out collecting bugs at dusk. It's not that we're growing old and missing the magic either; their numbers (or lack thereof) are warning us that fireflies really are disappearing.

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My kids have spent the last couple of nights collecting the flashy critters in our backyard in Cascade, IA. It's fun to see and enjoy. But their numbers seem rather low. Maybe it's because I now live in town and I'm viewing it against, like I said, a childhood fairytale field of light-up bug butts. Then my kid mentioned to me that she would be the last generation to see fireflies. So, of course, I had to get digging.

In Iowa, the culprits are a pretty familiar story for most bugs and our "loss of light:" habitat loss, pesticides, and light pollution. Fireflies need damp areas, tall grass, and leaf litter to survive. But as more of our fields get tilled right to the fence line, and yards get mowed razor-short and sprayed, we’re unknowingly pushing these glowing bugs out. Add in porch lights and LED yard lighting, and we’ve made it even harder for them to find each other and mate.

It’s a quiet kind of crisis; one that takes a nostalgic lens to sense. The one that slowly ebbs away with each passing year. One you don’t always see until it’s nearly too late.

But here’s the good news: we can still help. Leaving patches of your yard a little wild, skipping pesticides in the summer, and turning off outdoor lights after dark can make a real difference. There are even local citizen science projects, like Firefly Watch, where Iowans can track sightings to help researchers understand how populations are changing.

I'm glad my kids, and yours, can grow up enjoying beautiful Iowa nights with fireflies. I just want their kids to see they aren't just something from an old story, or tall-tale from an old man. They should get to run barefoot through the grass, chasing lights for their mason jars, just like we did. The magic is still out there. But it needs our help to keep glowing.