>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Julie Philipp filling in for Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour started in the dark, literally and figuratively.

Most of us are unaware of the important role nighttime plays in the health of our planet.

But when most of us are sound asleep, there is a lot going on outside, and some of it seems downright magical.

Unfortunately, we humans don't always care about the things we cannot see or have not witnessed in the natural world.

We build and pave, cut down trees and mow without any understanding of how our actions, big and small, impact the creatures of the night.

We keep the lights on without giving any thought to how that disrupts the natural world and ultimately affects the health of our environment and our own well-being.

Today, we are going to take a walk into darkness with some people who have spent a lot of time there, and we're going to try to get you out there as well.

I am pleased to welcome Leigh Ann Henion.

She's a New York Times best selling author of a book called Night Magic Adventures Among Glowworms Moon Gardens and Other Marvels of the dark.

She's giving a talk in Buffalo on Thursday, sponsored by the Western New York Land Conservancy.

And we have Marisa Riggi, who is executive director of the Western New York Land Conservancy, and Wayne Gall, PhD, a retired entomologist.

If you can really retire from that kind of job, I don't know with the U.S.

Department of Agriculture and a noted expert on night insects and fireflies, thank you all for being here in studio and with us online.

Leanne, you're with us.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

All right.

We have everybody here.

So let's begin.

I'm going to start with you, Marisa.

I want to go back a few years to 2020.

Covid was in the news, but that is the same year that the Land Conservancy spearheaded an ambitious project.

I can't Talk Today ambitious project called the Western New York Wild Way.

And that's part of the reason we're all here talking about the dark today.

Could you tell us about that project?

>> Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for having me.

The Western New York Wild Way is our large landscape scale project, where we are working to identify and protect all of the remaining large habitats in Western New York, rebuild them, or conserve the areas that we can to make those areas, those core habitat areas, larger, but also really focus on the linkages and the Connections between them, because wildlife needs to not only have a home, but it needs to have homes to move to and places to roam.

So we're really focused on protecting those large landscapes and then connecting them throughout our region.

And the Western New York Wild Way is actually our local part of the much larger eastern wild Way, which connects the Gulf of Mexico up into the Canadian Maritimes.

So the entire east coast is part of the eastern wild way.

And we're a chunk of that.

And we're an important chunk because we're where the eastern wild way touches both Great Lakes.

>> Okay.

And it revealed your study has revealed about the importance of night to.

Yeah, we're going to get to that in a little bit.

But that's, that is why we have Leigh Ann Henion here.

She is from Boone, North Carolina.

She's a nature writer whose work has appeared in the Smithsonian, National Geographic, The Washington Post, and other publications.

She's written a couple of books, the most recent being Night Magic, Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens and Other Marvels of the dark.

Got to say, I love the title, Leanne.

It just sounds like so much fun.

And it is fun to read it.

You open the book with a quote from Wendell Berry, which I'm just going to read a little bit of, To Glow in the dark with a light is to know the light, to know the dark, go dark.

That's a place a lot of us tend to avoid.

Leanne, how much are we missing out on?

>> Oh, well, we're missing that on half of landscapes that we thought we knew.

Um, that's kind of what I discovered in the process of, of writing the book.

You know, I chose to focus on landscapes that I knew best, um, to hopefully provide a model for people to explore wherever they are.

Because I truly believe and I am willing to go on record wherever you live, wherever you are.

Um, there is a parallel universe of wonder right outside your door, and it's highly likely that unless you have set out to know the night world around you, that you, that you have a lot of discoveries to make.

>> Let's start with something really practical before we get into your actual journey into the night, you don't turn a flashlight on.

So how are you seeing the night when you go out?

>> Well, um, you can actually, it's surprising.

Um, you know, the different moon phases, you can get a moon calendar and pay attention to when there's going to be moonlight.

And sometimes you might want less, sometimes you might want more.

Um, and really, you know, a lot of people think, um, that your night vision is ripened and 20, 30 minutes, but actually we gain night vision incrementally for hours.

So it's really surprising if you spend time outside, if you are outside when the sun sets, allow your eyes to ripen as as things get darker, it's pretty amazing how much you can see.

And beyond that, um, I think that when you spend more time in the dark, you do start to pay more attention to your other senses as navigation tools.

You know, your sense of smell, hearing all of it.

And it is important, you know, when you're walking in the dark, as I was told to make a pronounced heel toe movement so you don't trip on roots or anything like that.

If you go a little further afield.

>> Okay, so we're, we're ready now to go outside in the dark.

Um, let's start with the obvious.

You know, people in Western New York are pretty familiar with fireflies.

You know, we can find them even in the city here, but not I'm not anywhere close to an expert on fireflies.

And I'm the kind of person that is like the woman in your book who says, we just have plain old fireflies.

I have a feeling Wayne here might set me straight.

But before I give him the chance to do that, could you share with us some of the magical nights you have spent with fireflies, which I believe was sort of an impetus for this book?

>> Um, yes.

Fireflies absolutely inspired the larger journey that I took.

Um, I wrote a magazine story for the Washington Post about visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park for their synchronous Firefly event.

Um, which is a huge deal.

You know, tens of thousands of ply to, to be able to go.

I was able to attend and it was a fantastic phenomenon.

But beyond that, um, I really recognized in that experience that not only was it fantastic to see this, this phenomenon of, of firefly light, uh, it was also incredibly restorative to spend time in the dark.

Um, which I wasn't expecting.

And I learned a lot about light pollution and how light pollution affects, um, pretty much every stage of a firefly's life cycle and how disruptive it was.

And spoiler alert, how disruptive it is for pretty much every living being on the planet, including humans.

Um, and so when I wrote that story and it came out, I had a lot of readers reach out to me and they told me that it had inspired them to turn off their porch lights, which really blew my mind because, you know, it's hard to change a habit to take a direct action.

Um, and so that just blew my mind that this story had inspired people to do that.

And what's more, I don't think they did it because I talked about how light pollution is harmful for human health, how it's harmful for wildlife.

I think that they did it because they got really curious about what they might be missing out on if they didn't turn out the lights, which is an absolute countercultural notion, right?

Because we think light is illumination, light is knowledge.

But so fireflies really helped me understand that darkness also has the power to reveal things.

And darkness has its own lessons to share.

>> And I think part of the reason people responded is because of the way you describe the experiences of being out there with the creatures in the night.

Can you describe what it was like to be at that event with those fireflies?

>> Yeah.

So when I heard synchronous fireflies and by the way, I mean, when I started this journey, I didn't, I kind of was a plain old fireflies person.

You know, I was like, oh, they're fireflies.

Um, you know, I had no idea.

You know, if you're seeing fireflies, you're likely even in your own yard or in a local field, you're seeing multiple species, um, at once.

And so every firefly species has a distinct flash pattern, you know, like a, like a fingerprint.

Um, and so I thought that synchronous fireflies meant that these fireflies were, went on and then went off, went on and off.

But really, it's a, it's a little more nuanced.

Um, and so, you know, you have, there's a twinkling in the forest and then all of a sudden there's kind of like this whoosh of light that just travels across the forest floor.

Like you're watching the northern lights move across the sky.

Only it's this living light along the forest floor.

And, you know, it's because these fireflies, they communicate to the firefly next to them.

So they take a cue.

It's like, it's like the saying, you know, light the candle.

If the person next to you and then the room will be illuminated.

And, you know, light pollution is an issue that I think is, is going to be a larger conversation as it becomes, you know, more, more of a public awareness.

Um, but, you know, I say if you can light the candle of the person next to you, you can also snuff it out.

And that's actually a good thing.

So, you know, I don't think we're given a lot of opportunities to appreciate the dark and, and we don't have a lot of dark, positive stories.

And so that is really what I tried to, to create when I was working on Night Magic.

>> Yes.

And we are going to get into why nocturnal life is so important to the planet and to humans.

Um, but first I'm going to let Wayne now set me straight.

What might we not know about the fireflies in our midst?

>> Well, there's so many great, um, directions that you could go in answering that question.

Um, maybe start out by saying you.

>> Get a little closer to your mic.

We'll hear you better.

>> You might not realize that actually in New York State, there are 40, 40 different species for 40, 40 different species of fireflies.

And even more curiously, only 31 of those 40 have flash patterns.

The other nine actually do not produce light.

>> They're fireflies who do not produce light.

>> Yes.

Oh, and one of the the one that's most familiar to me is called the Winter firefly that actually does overwinter as an adult can somehow survive freezing.

And when I worked for the US Department of Agriculture, I would routinely be identifying those from Canadian grown Christmas trees that would come across the border in November and December.

But that species does not produce light, and it undoubtedly uses pheromones, chemical perfumes to attract a member of the opposite sex.

Rather than using a flash pattern to do so.

So that.

So that's one thing that all fireflies produce light for communication and mate finding.

>> So how can someone looking at fireflies in their own backyard observe them?

What are some things they should be looking for?

And is there a way for a layperson to identify a type of firefly?

>> Well, as Leanne said, light pollution is a serious problem with observing fireflies, so the first thing people should do is turn off lights.

And I live in suburban Buffalo, and I can sit on my front porch and watch fireflies in my front yard.

And if the lights are down, that really helps.

Um, identifying them beyond genus level is actually more difficult than people realize.

Um, it's actually fairly difficult to identify fireflies to species.

Some are obvious, some aren't.

And a lot of them require recognizing the different flash patterns, which is essentially a Morse code in light.

>> Mhm.

So can you talk about one flash pattern?

What does it look like?

>> Well, there's one there's one species that has a characteristic J flash pattern where it actually sort of forms the letter J with dashes of.

>> Light, like a light stick.

Yeah.

Or a sparkler.

>> Yeah.

That's a that's a good analogy.

Yeah.

Sort of goes down and then up and flashes a couple of times forming that J moves a little bit, forms another J. So there are some that are really quite distinct.

>> The Julie's in the world have to go out and look for the J, look.

>> For the J species.

>> Yeah.

Okay.

We're going to talk again about how a lot about light pollution later in the show.

Um, but I want to go back here to Marisa.

The idea behind the Wild Way is to link core habitat areas to allow for movement.

And much of that apparently happens at night.

Can you talk about what happens in our neck of the woods when we're asleep?

>> Uh, so much.

Uh, we recently completed a wildlife movement analysis and study where we put out over 40 cameras, wildlife cameras across the Western New York, wild way to identify where is wildlife moving?

Are they using culverts?

How are they crossing roads?

What habitats are they?

Are we finding them in?

And the overarching thing that we found was everybody's moving at night or at dawn or dusk.

So a lot of our wildlife species are really reliant on moving around when it's dark out.

And that's when, you know, for many of them, it's safest to move.

Um, so we got, we have an at our, uh, at our event on Thursday, we'll be showing a lot of the photos, but we have oodles of photos of wildlife species at night moving around.

And we got to see species.

We weren't really expecting to get much evidence of including bobcats.

We got evidence of fisher.

We got evidence of black bear flying squirrel, uh, red fox, gray fox.

So lots of different mammals, lots of birds.

Uh, didn't get our cameras.

Didn't catch a whole lot of insect movement just because they aren't big enough usually to, to trigger the camera.

But it was a great evidence to see kind of who's moving around at night in Western New York.

And where are they moving?

>> Okay, we are talking about nocturnal life in nature, and we have with us nature writer Leigh Ann Henion Marisa Riggi, executive director of the Western New York Land Conservancy, and Dr.

Wayne Gall and entomologist and noted expert on night insects.

So, um, I'm going to get back to Leanne in a minute.

But first, Wayne beyond fireflies, what other insects?

Uh, really are you excited about?

What are what are they doing at night?

>> One of my one of my favorite groups, uh, to, um, to observe and study, uh, our underwing moths, relatively large, colorful moths that fly usually mid to late summer into early fall.

And they're attracted by a technique that entomologists use called sugaring, where you make this nasty brew with beer, molasses, honey and karo syrup, and you literally paint it after it ferments for a few days, you paint it before dark on tree trunks, just in a small area of a tree trunk.

And I like to make about maybe a quarter mile loop trail and maybe paint about two dozen trees.

>> So along the trail you're out there before night.

Before dark painting this yummy recipe painting the tree.

>> Painting, this glop onto trees and take a little piece of aluminum foil and push pin it above the glop so you can find it in the dark.

Because the aluminum is very reflective.

And then you go around the trail and a continuous circuit and observe the underwings.

And when I worked for the Buffalo Museum of Science as curator of Entomology, I would actually collect specimens for the museum's collection.

But I have to tell you one of my favorite stories that relates to being out at night.

That was actually a first time experience for me in, in, at the age of about 42, I made my usual, um, trail in the dark, uh, made the rounds.

And this one huge red oak tree.

I was noting some movement when I first turned my headlamp on, on the tree, and I turned the headlamp off and a flying squirrel, which up to that point in my life, I thought was a mythical creature, um, would come around to the front of the tree where the bait was when I turned the light off, and as soon as I turned the light on, it would scurry around to the back of the tree.

So I played peekaboo for about 15 minutes with a flying squirrel.

>> Was it interested in also eating what was attracting the insects?

>> Well, well, no doubt it was.

It was probably lapping up some of the sugaring, whether it was.

>> Or the beer.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah that's right.

>> Uh, and another time I was on the same trail and a camel cricket, which is a large wingless cricket, had crawled up the tree trunk, feeding on the bait.

And I wanted to collect that specimen for the museum's collection.

And just as I reached out to grab it, a flying squirrel actually glided down and nudged my finger just as I grabbed.

>> Wow.

>> The camel cricket.

Before the flying squirrel could get it.

So again, when you do things at night, sometimes they're serendipitous things that you can't predict that are just as.

As Lee-ann would say, they're magical.

Yeah.

>> Magical moments.

Magical.

>> And just one other quick thing.

Uh, yeah, I've been a leader at the Allegheny Nature Pilgrimage in southwestern New York for 41 years, and I've done Bugs by Night Light there for at least 25 of those years.

And, um, I was there the weekend after Memorial Day this year.

And one night we had a huge Polyphemus moth come fluttering in the second night, a Luna moth.

>> Wow.

>> And these are very large, showy moths and again, unpredictable, unscripted.

They just come in sort of randomly.

But that's always a big moment that gets the general public hooked on insects at night.

>> Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to travel in through the Amazon, where there's a ton of insects, and we did a lot of night viewing of insects, but it never really crossed my mind to go out and look for cool insects in New York State.

But they're out there.

>> They sure are.

And if you have a nice, humid night where it's still low wind and relatively warm, it's amazing what will come into a white sheet.

And the mercury vapor light.

>> Okay, we're going to talk about some ways to get out, um, in a little while.

Um, I want to go back to Leanne.

Um, in your book, you talk not just about animals at night, but you've written about trees and plants and how essential the night, um, is to.

Flora.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

>> Sure.

Um, yeah, one of the chapters that really, um, still kind of when I read it, it's, you know, I, I read it and I'm like, oh, take me back to the moon garden.

Um, because spending time in a moon garden is just such a fantastic experience.

And I think that we're so used to thinking of, you know, flowers, sunlit meadows, butterflies.

It's pretty striking when you recognize there's a whole night blooming landscape out there, and there's a whole world of these gorgeous moths out there.

Um, and so to watch a flower slowly, you know, open it cued by darkness is a powerful reminder, you know, that it's not just the sunlight that is nourishing.

The darkness is also incredibly important for, for plants to flourish.

Um, you know, and it's not just the night blooming flowers having that experience and Moon Gardens and finding night blooming wildflowers was a really fantastic part of my journey.

And Night Magic.

Um, but also I learned things that were really striking to me and surprising.

And, you know, looking back, it's like, I don't even know why it's surprising, but I can't believe I didn't know this, you know, leaves when they change into their gorgeous autumnal colors.

You know, I've always just thought of that as being associated with, with, you know, the, the growing, you know, the lowering temperatures, the growing cold.

But that's also cued by the longer periods of darkness.

Because, you know, I know that plants are photosensitive creatures, but to really be able to witness that I found to be incredibly powerful.

>> Mhm.

And what are some species of wildflowers that are blooming at night?

>> Well, one of the main characters in, in the book, um, became common evening primrose.

So common evening primrose found in ditches throughout, you know, throughout Buffalo, around all around that area.

Um, all around where I am all up and down, you know, East coast.

Um, these are wildflowers that in the, in the daylight, you know, nondescript, not really going to pay much attention.

They, they're keeping things pretty, pretty pursed.

Up and at night, you know, when the sun goes down, they actually have a little latch.

So this latch pops and it's like watching an time lapse camera.

It pops and these flowers just twirl open.

And, you know, part of the journey I was on, I was trying to find some tropical moon to, to witness them blooming, only to spoiler alert, discovered that I actually was surrounded in my neighborhood by these night blooming flowers, but I had never paid attention and I'd never gone out specifically seeking and paying attention to what plants around me were doing in the daytime versus the night.

And so it was a great discovery and shock to find these secret gardens all around me at night.

>> And rumor has it, Wayne, that you also know about plants.

What can we be looking for here at night?

>> Uh, in terms of flowering.

>> And flowering or plant activity, something beyond squirrels and bugs?

>> Um, I have to confess that I haven't spent a lot of time paying attention to plants at night, but I need to, um, so this is a cue for me to do that.

Um, I mostly have been focused on insects after dark, so I'm afraid I probably can't.

>> Okay.

That's okay.

I didn't mean to put you on the spot.

That's okay.

We are going to take a short break and when we come back, we will continue our conversation with nature writer Leigh Ann Henion Marisa Riggi, executive director of the Western New York Land Conservancy and Wayne Gall, PhD, and entomologist and noted expert on night insects.

We will be right back.

>> I'm Evan Dawson coming up in our second hour, a conversation about the city of Rochester's plans for housing in the neighborhood, a chance to build and offer homes for sale for $127,000 a piece, well below what a lot of homes on the market currently cost.

How many can they offer?

How can they do it?

What are the homes like?

We'll bring back that recent conversation on Connections.

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>> This is Connections I'm Julie Philipp sitting in for Evan Dawson, and today we are talking about how and why to explore the dark.

Now, Leanne, you talk a lot about how cool it is to be out and you have some great stories about being out in the dark, um, but you also it is a science book.

You are writing a nonfiction science narrative, um, about why nocturnal life is so important to the planet and to humans.

Um, can you talk about that?

>> Oh, uh, that could be answered a many different ways.

Um, you know, darkness is absolutely important as, as a natural cycle.

It's important as habitat, you know, and I think that we don't often think of darkness as habitat, but it's incredibly important.

Um, you know, and, and as we were talking about earlier, um, it's incredibly important to have those corridors of darkness.

Um, for, for wildlife, you know, and humans, I artificial light disrupts those natural cycles.

So to have that darkness is crucial for, for health, for, for thriving.

Um, and, you know, there are also things that we're really just now discovering.

Um, I think that, you know, there are a lot of different reasons that darkness is important, uh, in terms of health, in terms of health, for individuals, for ecological systems.

Um, but I think that we're really just discovering and, you know, one of the interesting things, um, that I did find in my research, there's not a lot of research on it, but it really, it can even affect, you know, the way that we, um, interact with each other and the language that we use.

And there, there's a correlation between mood disorders and artificial light and just things that we don't necessarily, you know, you don't necessarily think about when you're, you know, sitting in your living room with the lights ablaze at midnight.

And that's what seems normal to us, but we're really not too many generations removed from humans who had a very different relationship to natural darkness.

And those cycles.

And I think that we're just really starting to understand all the different ways that that is meaningful for us to get back to.

>> Do you think there's sort of a.

>> Shortage of research into the night compared.

To nature?

Daylight studies?

>> Oh, definitely.

You know, I mean, I do think that there we, you know, we, we know less about we know less about wildlife at night than we do about wildlife in the day.

I mean, that's, that makes sense.

You know, we're, we're diurnal creatures pretty much.

Um, but, you know, exploring all of the different cycles, it's, it's harder to, you know, be a bat biologist.

I've hung out with bat biologists and man, it is hard to keep up, you know, it's hard to do some of that nocturnal research.

Um, so we do have less.

And also, you know, we again, just don't think about it as much.

We don't think about that other half of, of our landscape quite as much because we just don't really have much of a relationship to it.

And again, you know, a few generations ago, I think that our ancestors, you know, did have, um, a more intimate relationship, but in some ways that relationship is being severed.

But it's one that we can reclaim.

I think when we talk about light pollution, people often talk about how it's, um, obscuring our view of the cosmos, which it is.

But I've also come to understand through my work with Night Magic, that it's also, um, preventing us from, from knowing the world that's directly around us at night.

>> Mhm.

Okay, let's talk a bit about those corridors that the New York Land Conservancy, um, is working to restore.

When can you put that into just plain language?

What is a corridor that the animals use?

How do they move around?

>> Yeah.

So, um, you know, all, all species pretty much have a home range or a size of an area that they require to live in and have access to, but they also require the ability to move.

Just think about a bear, for example, having cubs, they're not all going to live together forever.

They've got to disperse.

They've got to move out.

They've got to move on to different habitats.

And what what has happened throughout, you know, the United States, honestly, is we've conserved these pockets and islands of habitat, and we've ignored the Connections between them.

And so when a bear wants to move on or find a new habitat or any creature, really, they have to navigate a landscape that's not connected and not permeable to them.

And so what we've done is we've mapped where are those habitats.

But as importantly, where are the Connections between them?

Where are the places that wildlife can move easiest?

A lot of times it's going to be relying on, a river corridors or stream corridors or remaining habitat.

Uh, and forested areas.

So where is wildlife able to move between those habitats?

And what we've found out through our study is that while the habitats that we've mapped in Western New York that are part of those core areas are protected at about 30%, the linkages between those cores are protected at 1.3%.

So we are, you know, really identifying a huge problem in terms of the Connections in our region, that those areas are just not permeable and protected in a way that makes them accessible for wildlife to move.

>> This is why we occasionally see a bear in the city.

And somebody thought they saw a mountain lion.

I think.

>> That happens frequently.

Someone thinks they see a mountain lion.

>> A lot of people thought they saw the mountain lion coming through.

But.

But creatures are being forced to come into areas where they might not come if there were corridors preserved.

Um, so you mentioned streams, rivers.

What are some of the major quarters, even if they're not preserved that in Rochester, in Monroe County and the surrounding area?

>> Oh, and so this is a great question.

I wish our partner organizations who work in Monroe County.

Like, uh, the Genesee Land Trust were here because they could talk better about that.

Our, our service area kind of ends, uh, at Genesee County and Orleans County.

So we've mapped out the core areas in the northern part of the western New York.

Wild ways.

Uh, really Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge and Oak Orchard being kind of two core areas.

Uh, and the linkages between them on the eastern side of Erie County and the western side of like Wyoming and Genesee, there is a linkage, and it is an extremely important linkage because there's only really one mapped linkage between southern, the southern region of the wild way of the Western New York wild way and those huge, important northern habitats.

And Lake Ontario.

So it's kind of right on the border between those counties where we have a corridor that is there, it's mapped.

It's the best pass passage for wildlife, but it's extremely under-protected and very, very vulnerable.

>> And, you know, we build a lot of things east to west, and it sounds like a lot of animals are moving north south.

We have a thruway, we have a canal, we have train tracks.

What happens in those places?

>> So where we have infrastructure that we as human beings are using to move throughout the landscape, we end up having conflicts with wildlife.

Uh, just driving here from Buffalo, the amount of roadkill that I saw on the 90 and then on the 390, it's a lot.

Um, so there's a lot of wildlife vehicle collisions that happen.

There's a lot of mortality that happens in these places, but there is hope.

So I don't want everyone to be too sad about.

There is a way to hope for a better future.

And that is that we have all of these culverts and these passages that exist.

Um, and if we work together with local dot and local, um, transportation organizations in making sure as those culverts get upgraded, as those bridges get replaced, that we make room for wildlife, that we ensure that wildlife is able to utilize those underpasses, we can greatly reduce the mortality and the car accidents, frankly, that people are getting into.

And that is something that's happening.

That partnership exists dot New York State Dot is part of our Western New York Wild Way partner network.

And so those, um, solutions are underway, which is a really exciting kind of thing that's going on in the Western New York region.

>> Okay, let's move on now to light pollution.

And I, I have a feeling all of you might have something to say about light pollution, but it is bad for humans.

There are studies that show it affects our sleep.

A higher risk of depression, obesity, some cancers.

It's been linked to a lot of things.

But I want to talk about how it also affects plants and animals, such as their migration and migrating and all that.

So, um, first of all, can one of you maybe Leanne, let's use you go back to you define light pollution.

>> Um, well, light pollution is artificial light.

Um, and it, it is often light that it's late trespass.

Um, so artificial light and light trespass is, you know, where artificial light is overused, not needed.

Um, and maybe unwelcome, you know, a lot of times people will be like, oh, everybody's got this neighbor who put up a light.

Um, so if you've had that experience, you know, light trespass and, and light pollution is diffuse light.

So a lot of times this is light that's, you know, not contained in a city.

You know, we think artificial light is in a city, but there's also diffuse light pollution that is, is kind of seeping into more rural areas across the world.

Um, and so it is, it is, yes, it is disruptive, pervasive.

It's, it's incredibly pervasive.

And again, it's, we're losing habitat because darkness is habitat and it's happening, you know, incrementally.

And I think it's something that's kind of gone, you know, unnoticed, uh, for a long, a long time.

And now we're gaining awareness.

But, you know, again, on a hopeful note, um, this is an environmental issue that can absolutely be addressed with positive effects immediately.

Um, you know, turn off the lights and it, and it's, it's done.

You can have huge amounts of light pollution and diffuse light that can be, you know, taken care of immediately with, with decision making.

>> Yes.

You talked in your book about you gave an example of a summer home, um, in your neck of the woods, because you're in a pretty rural area.

But those people who very rarely visited this home, it was a second home, but they would always leave a light on.

Um, and you talked about, I believe, how that impacted a tree or trees in the area and owls and all of that.

Can you tell us that story a little bit?

>> Sure.

Actually, um, the light that I know, the light that you're talking about in the book, um, so, you know, throughout this process, all of a sudden I really was able to start mapping the lights around me.

And I'm fortunate in that, you know, I live in a place that is still dark enough for me to notice when a new light goes on.

Um, but so that light in particular, I noticed because it was actually in an area where I had discovered, um, some glowworms.

So these are Glowworms kind of one of my, one of my great stories of, of my experience in exploring Night Magic.

Um, you know, I always wanted to go to New Zealand to see their fantastic neon blue glow worms, only to discover that, um, that I live in a region which is one of the only regions in the world that also has neon blue glow worms.

So, you know, millions of people go to New Zealand to see these glowworms.

Um, not that many people even know that we have these glowworms on the east coast of the United States.

Um, and I, I, you know, actually found them in my own neighborhood and it was right down from this, this security light that these people had put up.

And, you know, this is something that they, I would really, really guess that they had no idea they were there.

Um, and this light was threatening this, this fantastic, um, natural wonder, you know, that again, millions of people travel to New Zealand to see this.

It's in my neighborhood.

And, you know, these people who rarely, uh, spend time in the area had this light on, um, and had no idea that that was endangering this fantastic, um, species.

>> Right.

So, um, Glowworms Wayne, do we have anything close to a glow worm?

They sound really incredible.

And she writes a lot about them in her book.

It's in the title.

There's, if I remember correctly, they're kind of clear in the middle and blue on.

Can you describe it for me?

Leanne?

I'm probably not doing it justice.

>> Well, there are a lot of different things that people call Glowworms, I should say, um, you know, including firefly larvae, because I mean, firefly larvae glows in, in and under the ground, you know, before we see them rise as fireflies.

But the glowworms that I'm writing about in the title and in the book, um, this is a species or it's a, it's actually a species of fungus, gnat.

Um, that is that glows blue.

>> Okay.

And I know about those because they were on my seedlings when I was growing.

All right.

So, so Wayne, what's glowing?

>> Well, it's a, it's a bioluminescent reaction.

Um, that's going on at the, at the tissue level.

Um, and it, of course it depends on which kind of insect you're talking about.

Um, in, in adult fireflies and even their larvae.

Um, there's an enzyme substrate reaction that goes on chemical called luciferin that combines with an enzyme called luciferase.

And in the presence of oxygen, that's what causes the glow and the, um, the pulsing of it is actually controlled by nitric oxide.

So there's some interesting things going on with chemistry in the body of, of adult fireflies and presumably also in the larvae.

>> Mhm.

And so those are, is, are those the, the glowing insects that we have in this area?

Anything else that has the bioluminescence.

>> To an entomologist, when someone says glowworms, generally they're referring to a family of soft bodied beetles called, um, family phengodidae.

Those are that's the family that's technically called Glowworms.

And to be honest, I've never seen a fen goaded beetle.

>> You have to go down to to Boone.

>> I would love, I would love to actually see that.

>> It's closer than New Zealand.

>> Yeah.

But yes.

>> So I talk about light pollution.

Um, as it relates to the quarter, because these animals tend to move at night.

Um does a light affect them as they're making their movements at night.

>> Yeah, certainly.

And we could even see evidence of this on the um cameras.

Like if the sometimes there's a photo eye on them that will startle an animal.

So even a tiny little light can have an impact.

And I think we can all experience that.

If you turn the lights on in your backyard and there's a critter back there, they are stunned and pause and aren't sure what to do because it's artificial and not what they were expecting.

And another thing that we think about a lot with light pollution, especially here, we're in such an important flyway for birds, and a lot of birds are moving at night, they're migrating at night, and when we have lights on at night, we're really impacting their ability to navigate and to move the way they would have in absence of light pollution.

So it's a really important thing for us all to be thinking about turning our lights off at night.

I have this very, uh, visceral memory of being a kid and vacationing in the Outer Banks.

And they had at least they did then.

I don't know if they still do.

They had rules about everyone had to turn their lights off at night so you could see the stars.

And it was the first time as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Buffalo, that I got to experience, except for when I was camping, what it was like to sit on a porch and no one's porch light was on, no streetlights were on, and it was really a transformative experience.

And I'd love for us to be able to have everyone experience that here, too.

>> It is incredible.

And I do know people go to the Adirondacks.

Even the dark sky movement is becoming more prominent.

And I again, I was traveling in Azores, out on an island in the middle of the Atlantic, and I. I had no idea there were so many stars in the sky that when you get away from.

From light.

But we.

When we think of light pollution, we tend to think of bigger cities like New York City.

Um, but our smaller or even, you know, small small cities or rural areas, are they contributing to, to light pollution as well?

>> We're pretty much all contributing to light pollution.

Um, I think it in Lee Ann talks about this really well in her book that we're all kind of, um, I think inherently, somehow we grow up thinking that lights are safe and darkness isn't.

And so we have this bias towards turning porch lights on or having flashlights when we walk at night because we think it's going to make us safer.

Um, but it also takes away this really important part of being human and a really important habitat and thinking about habitat, not just in terms of one location, but also in terms of time, time of day, time of night.

Uh, and so I think we all, we all contribute to light pollution, but we all could also could solve light pollution.

We all could take actions to, to decrease the amount of light pollution that, uh, our wildlife creatures and our plants are having to contend with.

>> So every light that goes off is helping.

>> Is a win.

>> Yes, yes.

So Leanne, um, I believe in your book, you say at one point you were kind of afraid of the dark.

What do you tell people who are afraid of the dark?

Before we get into tips on how to find creatures and when to go, and where, um, first let's just get over our fear of the dark.

How did you do that?

>> Um, well, I'm not completely over my fear of the dark.

I will here and admit this.

Um, you know, I've traveled across.

I've traveled around the world solo, but, you know, sometimes when I'm setting out in my own neighborhood without a flashlight, with no, no form of light.

I mean, I get a little bit nervous.

Um, but one of the things that over time has really helped me is getting to know my neighbors, getting to know, um, these species that share my neighborhood at night that I wasn't aware.

And, you know, also kind of, you know, harking back to, you know, the time, timing, time of day, um, you know, I started to know when the deer travel a certain area and a deer huffing at you in the dark is actually terrifying.

If you don't know what's going on.

Um, but you know, okay, this is when the deer come through.

This is where I typically run into them.

They're, they're a little bit annoyed because they're not used to seeing humans here at this time, um, with their huffing, you know, owls getting to know owls sounds, you know, they're used in horror movies, but they're, they're fantastic.

Um, not so haunting when you know what species it is and when you can identify that voice.

Um, so I think getting to know the landscape at night and getting to know those creatures, um, is important because, you know, we're not, I think we're not so much afraid of the dark as what we think might be lurking in the dark.

And so when we know what's lurking in the dark, um, it's really helpful.

And also, I just want to mention, um, bringing it back to New York because New York has some fantastic, um, some fantastic creatures.

Uh, one of the insects that I ran into in my research while I was attending an event called Bat Blitz, which was amazing and also exhausting.

Um, but I was in this ravine and I saw this insect.

It's called a railroad worm.

And you definitely have these all around you.

And these are actually larvae.

It's a larvae form of a type of beetle.

And they're called railroad worms because they, they look like centipedes and they're light.

Um, look, makes them look like lit windows on a passenger train.

And so these railroad worms are, are all, all around.

Um, and, you know, I've lived here, I've lived in my home region, you know, my entire life.

I, I only just now saw my first railroad worm.

But if you, if you seek them, you will find them.

Basically, when it comes to nocturnal wonders.

>> I love the name Wayne.

Have you seen a railroad?

Railroad worm?

>> I have not, but it's on my bucket list.

>> Is it?

So you know they're out there.

You just have not found them.

So what what tips do you have for people that say, okay, tonight I'm going to turn out the porch light.

I'm going to put away the flashlight.

The kids and I are all going out into the world.

What, what should.

And all of you can chip in here.

What should we do to prepare?

What kinds of things can we see?

How do we see them?

>> Well, this is sort of counterintuitive to the subject of light pollution.

But as an entomologist, one of the best ways to attract insects at night is with either an ultraviolet light or a mercury vapor bulb.

And so you're creating light.

But the curious thing is insects that don't normally need light to navigate are attracted to these light sources.

>> HMM.

Why is that?

>> Do you know?

Well, it's.

>> Did you ask them?

>> Well, and Leanne actually mentions this in her book.

Um, a lot of night active insects orient towards distant celestial objects like the moon and the stars.

And suddenly there's a, there's an artificial mini star in its environment, and they become attracted.

>> A detour sign, basically.

>> Yeah.

And a lot of insects will actually orient flying around that light at an angle of 90 degrees.

And the circle gets ever narrower.

And that's the the proverbial moth to a flame.

Okay.

But again, it's probably a result of orienting towards distant celestial objects that produce light.

Okay.

But anyway, we use mercury vapor lights, uh, which I prefer for interpretive programs at night because it also gives off a lot of visible light so people can see the insects that we're trying to attract and observe.

So it's kind of counter intuitive to light pollution, but it does it.

>> You mentioned earlier to a white sheet.

>> Yeah.

Just simply what I simply do is take, um, about a quarter inch nylon rope, tie it between two trees, throw an old bed sheet that my wife will sacrifice to me Hang it with clothespins, just like you'd hang a white sheet to dry, bed sheet to dry.

Anchor it at the bottom with rocks or bricks.

Prop pop up.

Prop a mercury vapor bulb in front of it on a stand and wait for the fun to begin.

>> And they'll just line right up on that sheet.

>> Yeah.

It's amazing.

I mean, one of one of my favorite experiences, because I'm primarily trained as an aquatic entomologist, uh, at least three times.

I can specifically remember a giant water bug coming into the sheet.

And I knew it was a giant water bug even before I saw it, because I was on the other side of the sheet.

Because when that thing hit the sheet, it was like someone throwing a rock at it and the sheet billowed.

Wow.

And I walk around and here's this two and a half, three inch long giant water bug.

>> Out of the water clinging.

>> Yeah, they fly at night.

In fact, one of their common names is electric light bug.

>> Leanne, what advice do you have?

I know you go out for salamanders and all kinds of creatures.

What what?

How can people get started?

>> Yeah.

Um, I would just want to say, you know, in terms of, um, mothing stations or putting up lights to see those moths, it really is uncomfortable sometimes.

I mean, the because you, you know, as you learn about light pollution, how it's negative, but, you know, you don't want to do it all the time, you probably aren't going to do it in a similar place.

So kind of keeping the harm low.

But I think there's something incredibly impactful about being able to witness the diverse and gorgeous forms of life that stream out of darkness, because I think that culturally, we're taught that darkness equals death.

Darkness is a void.

So to really witness it as a cornucopia of life is really powerful.

But in terms of, you know, going without lights, um, I really don't think you have to go very far at all.

You know, if you have never just gone into your own backyard, um, your own neighborhood without any artificial lights and without, you know, allowing your night vision to fully ripen, um, you, you are going to have a new experience.

Um, you are going to hear unfamiliar things and see unfamiliar things and maybe even smell some unfamiliar things.

Um, night blooming flowers are particularly pungent with their, with their, um, scents at night.

Um, so there's just an entire sensory world to be explored and really you don't even have to travel at all.

I think you can sit a chair, you know, in the darkest spot you can find in your own neighborhood.

And the wonders will just come to you.

>> I love that.

That's a great way to end this.

There's not a lot of preparation.

Just sit down, turn out the lights, and let it come to you.

So we're going to we have a little bit of time left.

Um, about a minute.

How can people attend Leigh Anne's talk?

>> Yeah.

We're thrilled to have Leanne come here.

Uh, she will be here Thursday, June 11th at 7 p.m.

At Trinity Episcopal Church.

You can sign up by going to our website w ny.org.

There will also be on our YouTube page and possibly our Facebook live stream.

So if you're not able to make the drive out to Buffalo, you can enjoy it there.

Uh, and we're just, we're thrilled to have her come.

>> And it's all free.

So thank you.

We are out of time, but I'd like to thank my guests, nature writer Leigh Ann Henion Marisa Riggi.

Marisa Riggi, executive director of the Western New York Land Conservancy.

Dr.

Wayne Gall, entomologist and noted expert on Night Experts.

Thank you all for insects.

Thank you for joining me, and thanks to our production team and our listeners.

Have a great day.

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