{"id":14898,"date":"2025-12-25T09:24:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T16:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/researchers-insist-fireflies-exist-in-new-mexico-if-you-know-where-to-look\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:33:12","slug":"researchers-insist-fireflies-exist-in-new-mexico-if-you-know-where-to-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/researchers-insist-fireflies-exist-in-new-mexico-if-you-know-where-to-look\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers insist fireflies exist in New Mexico \u2013 if you know where to look"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fireflies
Fireflies are seen flying at a forest in Thailand. Researchers also insist fireflies live in New Mexico, if you know where to look. stock.adobe.com<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

This time of year is when Anna Walker, who directs the Western Firefly Project in New Mexico, gets a few false reports in her inbox.<\/p>\n

Well-meaning people, mostly in Albuquerque and other urban areas, see flashes of yellow light dancing through trees and become convinced they\u2019ve seen a firefly. What they actually see is a laser beam that\u2019s part of a high-tech Christmas display.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey project light up into trees and make the lights kind of move around,\u201d Walker told Source New Mexico. \u201cThose fool a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

False reports are one common challenge for the community science initiative chasing the elusive New Mexico firefly. Another is convincing the public that fireflies exist here at all. Christy Bills, an entomologist at the University of Utah, started the Utah Firefly Project 11 years ago, partially in response to the \u201cassumption that we don\u2019t have any\u201d fireflies in the West, she told Source NM. Back then, she and a colleague launched a project with a website that solicited firefly sightings from the public and got a flood of responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized they were everywhere. They\u2019re all over the state, and so we just kept tracking them and getting repeat confirmation about certain populations,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the project expanded outside of Utah, because we were getting reports from Idaho and Wyoming and Nevada and Colorado and New Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anna
Anna Walker\u2019s firefly catching net leans against a camping chair in Mills Canyon on July 3, 2021. Her discovery that day meant a new state records and renewed her sense of \u201cawe with nature again.\u201d (Courtesy Anna Walker)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Bills decided to partner with institutions in other states to help verify reports. That\u2019s how she met Walker, an invertebrate species survival specialist at the New Mexico BioPark Society. Walker was eager to join the effort, she said, partially because she didn\u2019t know fireflies existed in Western states, apart from old references in museum collections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what drew me to this firefly journey, was that such a charismatic insect could exist without most people even knowing about it, because they haven\u2019t been studied hardly at all,\u201d she said. \u201cPretty much every time you go out into the field, there\u2019s like a discovery waiting to be found.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"One
One of the \u201chundreds\u201d of fireflies Walker found in Mills Canyon. Courtesy Anna Walker<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Fireflies are here if you know where to look, Bills and Walker insist. Since launching in New Mexico in 2021, Walker has confirmed 13 firefly occurrences from more than 100 reports. She\u2019s also collected 27 specimens that she entered into the collection at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico.<\/p>\n

According to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which touts itself as an open access database of \u201ctypes of life on Earth,\u201d four confirmed sightings of Photinus pyralis, the Common Eastern Firefly, have occurred in New Mexico since 2021. They all occurred between 8 p.m. and midnight in late June or early July in Northeastern New Mexico, specifically in Guadalupe, San Miguel and the border between Mora and Harding counties, according to the database.<\/p>\n

That is just one of at least 13 species of firefly that Walker says exist in New Mexico, though only four or five are of the flickering, flying variety. Others are glow worms, and others are \u201cdark fireflies\u201d that never bioluminesce but share common ancestry with flashing fireflies, Walker said.<\/p>\n

Of the 13 confirmed occurrences, three are \u201cstate records,\u201d Walker said, which means she made the first confirmed sighting of a particular species in New Mexico, and they are still investigating whether several of the sightings are of new species.<\/p>\n

But even as Walker sets out to confirm sightings and make new discoveries, she fears climate change is drying up the wetlands that nourish fireflies. For example, she got reports of fireflies in Gallinas Creek near Las Vegas but she was unable to find any after the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire occurred there in early 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worry that declines due to drought and forest fires may be responsible for our inability to find these populations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But she said will continue tracking down reports of fireflies, even if she\u2019s initially skeptical, because of what happened right after she joined Bills\u2019 project.<\/p>\n

Back on July 3, 2021, Walker set out to confirm a sighting of the Common Eastern Firefly, her fourth or fifth outing. The species had never been reliably confirmed in New Mexico since the 1920s. The report came from someone in Mills Canyon, which rises on either side of the Rio Grande north of Roy, New Mexico, far from light pollution and under a wide open starry night.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of fireflies greeted her, she said. It\u2019s the biggest population she\u2019s ever seen in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t even know how to describe what the feeling was. I think it was just, like, awe, with nature again. You experience it a lot when you\u2019re a kid, and then as you get older you forget that nature can be so awe-inspiring,\u201d she said. \u201cIt just felt so magical, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source NM is an independent, nonprofit news organization that shines a light on governments, policies and public officials.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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