Pa. Firefly Festival makes 1st stop in Butler County
FRANKLIN TWP — The Pennsylvania Firefly Festival on Saturday held the first of what could be an annual event aimed at introducing people to the county's environmental features, especially the synchronous firefly.
About 20 people attended the festival, which originated in 2013 and is based in Kellettville in Forest County.
Since then, the festival has held satellite festivals at various places including Saturday's festival at Camp Lutherlyn.
Festival president Jeffrey Calta of Chicora and cofounder Peggy Butler of Kellettville call the satellite festivals “glow and know” camp outs.
All fireflies use their bioluminescent flashes in their mating ritual, but synchronous fireflies are one of a few species that synchronize their flashes, Calta said.
He said 1,300 people subscribe to the festival's newsletter. The people who attended the “glow and know” learned about the event from the newsletter.Synchronous fireflies are regular nighttime visitors to the camp, said Holly Schubert, assistant director of environmental education for Camp Lutherlyn.A stream that creates an opening in the dense woods around the camp is one of the best places to see the fireflies, Schubert said.“It's a really nice spot. It's easier to see them in the stream opening than in the forest, but they're everywhere,” she said.Synchronous fireflies were discovered in Allegheny National Forest in 2012, Butler said.Before then, the fireflies were thought to live only in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. When a team of scientists from Tennessee came to Pennsylvania to conduct a survey of the insects, they camped in the back yard of Butler's home near the national forest.“They studied in my backyard for 10 days,” she said.The scientists collected samples and sent them back to their lab where DNA testing determined they were indeed synchronous fireflies.The non-profit festival was created and began holding free festivals every year since then, except last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Butler said 400 people showed up the first year and the event grew to attract 1,100 people in 2010.But that was too many people. The impact the crowds had on the environment threatened the habitat of the fireflies, so the festival began charging admission and limiting attendance, she said.
“We were all about education, but were worried about impacting the habitat of the very creatures we were there to see,” Butler said.A similar turn of events took place in the Great Smokey Mountains, where a 10-day synchronous firefly festival drew huge crowds every year.Butler said the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, which hosts the festival, implemented a lottery system in which tickets are issued to 1,000 randomly selected people.She said the COVID shutdown gave festival organizers an opportunity to “hit the reset button” to make the festival sustainable and environmentally responsible.The “glow and know” events are limited to 50 people and admission is charged to cover the cost of meals and other activities during the two-day camp.Because fireflies display their bioluminescence at night, the festival at Camp Lutherlyn included daytime activities that campers could take in until darkness fell.The activities included a presentation about the glacial movements that created geological formations in the county, a hike to the ancient rock shelter on the camp grounds where Native American artifacts dating to 10,000 BC have been found, and a drive to the West Liberty Esker and the prairie at McConnells Mill State Park.
