Owen Martin has a simple remedy for anyone who doesn’t believe fireflies live in Colorado.
The University of Colorado Boulder Ph.D. student arranges visits to the places where he studies the bioluminescent insects. On a recent evening, he led an expedition to a marshy meadow near Boulder Reservoir, where the beetles rose from tall grasses after a series of afternoon thunderstorms. As lightning pierced the horizon, the bugs first blinked, then traced longer arcs of light into the fading dusk.
“If you pay a bit more attention, you find things like this all over the place,” Martin said. “It’s one of those things that give me a lot of hope and joy and makes me happy to be alive.”
Lampyrid beetles — better known as fireflies or lightning bugs — are far more widespread in the Midwest and eastern U.S. Along Colorado’s Front Range, however, the bugs emerge from their larval state to mate for only around two weeks in late June and early July around the region’s scattered wetlands…