All firefly lovers might consider doing this:
- Contact Sigma-Aldrich to ask them to stop harvesting wild fireflies:
Sigma-Aldrich Corporation
3050 Spruce St.
St. Louis, Missouri 63103
800.325.3010
Customer Service: OC_DOM_HC@sial.com
- Write to fireflyproject@yahoo.com to ask them to stop harvesting wild fireflies.
- Help us to organize this campaign to save fireflies.
Write to us at flash@flashtogether.org.
If you are participating in collection efforts, we would encourage you to discontinue your participation. We hope we have convinced you that you are not providing the assistance to scientists, doctors, or public health workers that you might have been led to believe you were providing. And the fireflies really don't enjoy it much, either. Maybe you could keep bees? Bees are pretty much just as cool as fireflies.
If you are a scientist who uses luciferase in experimentation, we would encourage you to make certain that you are using synthetic, not natural, luciferase. The synthetic product is better, more reliable, and is always available. It is typically cheaper, too!