Standing Room Only for the Firefly Shows

We missed it, but record numbers of others saw fabulous synchronized “blinking” shows performed by cooperative fireflies throughout Elkmont in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and in western North Carolina.

All week long the crowds came to see the shows, and Jim Calderback, owner of Moonshine Creek Campground in Balsam, NC, said, “Our guests come to hear the rushing waterfalls, maybe a bear or two. I never would have thought fireflies would take top billing, but this summer, we have people walking all over the campground looking for them.” Oddly, the fireflies come back to the same spot in the campground each year, much as they do at Elkmont.

On Thursday night 2,000 people showed up at Elkmont to see the shows and Park Rangers said the crowd exceeded the parking facilities and the new transportation shuttles taking people from the parking lots to the “shows” and back. “Overall, we feel the nights when we had the trolleys and a greater management presence went better than the Monday through Wednesday nights when we did not,” said park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

Biologists in the Smokies are looking for new groupings of synchronous fireflies –Photinus carolinus - inside the 800 square mile park. For the past two weeks, researchers have conducted a “Beetle Blitz” in the Smokies as part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory. They found what may be a new “species of firefly to the park – a small species called the blue ghost that doesn’t flash, but hovers low to the ground and give off a pale white or bluish glow,’ according to entomologist Becky Nichols. She said that there are more than 14 different species of fireflies in the park in addition to the synchronous species.