Are fireflies beneficial insects or pests? Where can you see them, and why is the environment causing their numbers to decline?

Fireflies are beneficial insects. Fireflies are environmentally sensitive insects, extremely attuned to changes in the natural environment. Their numbers are now declining more and more, and they can only be seen in environments with mountains and water that are clean and pollution-free.

Zhang Mingzhong, deputy director of Dongshi Forest Farm, said that because the forest farm is home to as many as 17 species of fireflies, the most numerous being the black-winged firefly species, and each species of firefly has a different breeding season, and because of differences in latitude and altitude, the breeding seasons all vary, and Dongshi Forest Farm has such a wide variety of fireflies that they can be seen from March to October. Usually, April 15 to 25 is the peak breeding season for fireflies. Taking last year as an example, revenue in April alone accounted for one third of the forest farm's total revenue that year, while this year, affected by the warm winter, the forest farm estimates that April 10 to 20 will be the peak of the breeding season, and the number of fireflies is expected to reach 300,000.

Zhang Mingzhong said that in earlier times there were many fireflies fluttering about in the countryside. Dongshi Forest Farm uses the existing firefly habitat for ecological restoration, creating an environment suitable for larvae to forage, requiring that the hillside land in the firefly habitat must not be excavated or damaged, and maintaining a state of low-level development.

In addition, to allow firefly larvae to grow smoothly, cucurbit plants are grown within the forest farm to let snails reproduce and provide food for carnivorous firefly larvae, and pesticides must not be sprayed around the habitat, because firefly larvae only eat insect carrion and snails and slugs. Pesticides not only kill these animals, but also kill the firefly larvae that eat them.
We should now do a good job of protecting the ecological environment so that the number of fireflies stops declining, otherwise this kind of insect may disappear.