Fireflies in Nanjing flicker around a tent at night. Photo: CFP

This is the time of the year when night life has a new meaning. The city's fireflies, with their alluring, blinking magical displays, offer a fascinating contrast to the city's techno-colored street and shop lighting, and many Shanghai people are setting out to spend time watching and enjoying this natural spectacle.

The hunt for the fireflies has also been given a public push recently by the publication of recommended viewing spots for the tiny nocturnal creatures by the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration.

The list of six destinations includes the highly recommended Cenbu village, a village beside Shanghai's largest freshwater lake Dianshan Lake in Qingpu district. Other spots listed are the Shanghai Botanical Garden, the Chenshan Botanical Garden and the Shanghai Zoo.

These are some of the last places where fireflies can be easily found in the city. Fireflies can only live where there is good quality air and water, little external lighting, lush undergrowth and little pesticide. They emit a flashing light to attract mates or prey.

Jiang Long is the founder of the Firefly Environmental Protection Volunteers, and he told the Global Times that there are two species of fireflies chiefly found around Shanghai - one prefers a drier environment while the other thrives near water.

Inconsiderate tourists

But experts and activists are warning against an influx of visitors to these places and, in particular, Cenbu village. Unlike the fireflies at the botanical gardens and the zoo, which offer guided tours, the delicate creatures at the village are more vulnerable to unruly and inconsiderate tourists.

Fu Xinhua is China's leading firefly expert and a professor with the Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan. He told the Metro Express newspaper that some firefly watchers could harm the fireflies with their behavior - for example using flashlights which can disturb their mating.

It's a serious point. The Nanjing Daily reported that after a firefly watching area at Zijin Mountain in Nanjing was publicized last year, tourists overwhelmed the place and the species has almost vanished from the mountain.

In fact, the number of fireflies at Cenbu village has already fallen sharply. On summer nights in 2012, up to about 3,000 fireflies were visible but last year fewer than 1,500 could be seen.

Though there is no evidence that the visitors are the sole or major cause of the trend, villagers told eastday.com that the area had become quite popular with tourists and some city visitors seemed to enjoy catching frogs and lobsters and other wildlife.

At the Shanghai Botanical Garden there is a summer night program for firefly watching conducted by ecologists, teachers and trained volunteers. Staff there told the Global Times that although there were no precise figures for firefly populations over the past few years, they had not noticed any decline in numbers.

Organized tours

Volunteer founder Jiang told the Global Times that the Shanghai Botanical Garden firefly watch tours were the best organized of the firefly outings in the city because of the professionalism of the guides.

"The big advantage of Shanghai Botanical Garden's program is that the guides are experts or have completed the training course run by the Shanghai Wild Bird Society, and this has laid a solid foundation for quality firefly watching and sustainable eco-tourism.

"Because these guides carefully explain and closely monitor the situation, any disturbance to the fireflies or their habitat is kept to a minimum," Jiang said.

Garden staff said the rules for going on one of their nocturnal animal programs included making sure that visitors did not use flashlights or take pictures with flash. "Talking loudly and catching fireflies were also forbidden," a staff member said.

Jiang agrees with this approach. "It not only satisfies the visitors' curiosity, but gives them information about the species and might spur some to take part in protecting them."

He said that this year Shanghai Zoo would also have guides trained by the Shanghai Wild Bird Society working in its firefly program.

But for Cenbu village both experts, Jiang and professor Fu, propose more radical solutions than just encouraging tourists to appreciate the natural beauty of fireflies - they want to see protection of the magical little creatures made a priority.

Deteriorating environment

Apart from the disturbance that tourists bring Jiang believes that the decline of the fireflies there is caused by what he described "the disappearance of nature" and the worsening of the village environment. There are fewer clean water areas around the village with many of the natural ponds now used as waste dumps and heavily polluted.

Modernization is another factor. More and more land has been taken over and developed for urbanization and part of the riverbank has been concreted over - this has affected the breeding patterns of the fireflies and last year none were seen round these places.

New and brighter lighting systems in the village's many recently renovated homes have disturbed mating rituals and breeding as well.

Professor Fu visited Cenbu village this year only to find that the number of fireflies has continued to decrease from low numbers the previous year. He told the Metro Express he feared they might be on the verge of extinction.

"When the number of fireflies drops below 1,000, the gene pool shrinks and this can lead to extinction. A recovery would take at least five years," Fu said.

He suggested that authorities follow the example set at Nanjing's Zijin Mountain which has established a firefly protection zone and set up a firefly protection zone at Dianshan Lake. Within this zone, Fu said, the local government may implement sensor-controlled outdoor lighting to reduce light pollution - a move that has the backing of the chair of the Shanghai Wild Bird Society, Yao Li.

Jiang explained that the key to protecting fireflies lay in protecting the habitat, specifically the water and land the fireflies needed. "The establishment of a protection zone will bring a positive result for the environment, and therefore the species."

The difficulty, Jiang said, lay in whether the village authorities understood how serious the situation had become and were motivated to create a protection zone. "The approach to protecting wildlife in Qingpu district has always been very passive, let alone when it concerns insects like fireflies that are not listed as protected animals," he said.

A romantic symbol

Fireflies are also part of Chinese folklore and dating companies often stage "firefly" events in gardens and parks right before Qixi Festival, the Chinese Valentine's Day.

The firefly is a traditional romantic symbol in China - it appeared and reappeared in classical poetry and one of the best-known verses was the Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Du Mu's (803-852) poem Qi Xi, which talked about teenage girls watching the stars while playing with fireflies with their fans.

A promotional event in Shanghai last year needed 5,000 fireflies and all over China there are similar activities - some involving more than 10,000 fireflies at a time. It seems to be a lucrative market.

Though the firefly dealers claim that they only sell specially bred flies raised in small towns, Fu said the expertise to breed fireflies was not easily found and he suspected most of the fireflies sold had been caught outside the city.

He said these release events could seriously harm the ecology. The released fireflies, he said, would either die immediately if they could not adapt to the new environment, or if they adapted they would be intruders on the local fireflies and other species, and could affect the ecological balance.

A lot of Chinese media have criticized these events in the past and this year, so far, there is only one romantic  firefly event planned for Shanghai.

But the curious and the ecologically indifferent can still buy fireflies from the country's leading shopping website and this is completely legal. One Shanghai dealer charges 399 yuan ($64.20) for 100 fireflies.

Most vendors promote fireflies as "romantic gifts for girlfriends" and one Hangzhou vendor is popular, with 226 people buying some over the past 30 days.

The Global Times talked to several of these dealers and all spoke enthusiastically about the beauty of the fireflies. One said he had proposed to his wife successfully because he used fireflies and the others talked of the magic the creatures had worked on wives, girlfriends and daughters.

Almost all said they released the fireflies after enjoying their flickering lights for a while. When asked whether they were aware of the potential damage they might be causing they said that wasn't as important as the happiness of their loved ones.