In the heavy humidity of the late afternoon Zick Soh slips quietly away from the bustling city crowds. Dressed in long sleeve pants and gumboots, he carries his camera in one hand, tripod in the other, and heads west toward a patch of dense, swampy rainforest. As the sunlight slips away, he steps into the thickening darkness, flicking his flashlight on and off to see what’s ahead. The air is dense and the smell of salt and soil grows stronger as he trudges through the mud. After nearly 30 minutes, he reaches a quiet wetland and settles beneath the tall canopy of mangrove trees. He sets up his camera, switches off his light, and silently waits.

At the edge of night they appear: tiny golden blinks, scattered like whispers across the dark. Mangrove fireflies, one of Singapore’s oldest native inhabitants, glow softly in the stillness, calling for a mate, racing against the clock of their short life span.

Across most of the island, glaring lights consume space from towering high rises, but here in the sliver of darkness preserved within the forest, a different kind of light survives. Soh carefully points his camera high, keeping still, and captures this rare and fragile moment.

“Being able to see fireflies is such a delight and it’s a privilege to still find them” Soh says.

“Getting to see them synchronise is such a wow factor.”

According to the New World Atlas, Singapore has been ranked as the country with the worst level of light pollution on Earth.

Fireflies are vanishing here. But as their glow fades a quiet effort is underway to protect what remains of the island’s natural heritage. Led by the National Parks Board, known as NParks, scientists, conservationists, and nature advocates are working to preserve firefly habitats, shield them from artificial light, and safeguard their future.

Fireflies vs. the City

In a city that rarely sleeps, darkness is rare. For fireflies, darkness is life.

Lampyridae, also known as fireflies, are a unique type of beetle, as they have the power to emit a bioluminescent light. With nearly 80 per cent of Singapore’s land covered with urban development, fireflies have been pushed to the brink of extinction here. They communicate and mate through their glow, but excess artificial light from street lamps, buildings, and floodlights interferes with this process, disrupting their ability to find one another. In densely lit environments like Singapore, where even green spaces are often surrounded by urban glow, this can have devastating effects.

PhD student Janine Soh, from the National University of Singapore, is studying how light pollution affects insect ecology, with a particular focus on Singapore’s firefly species. Alongside her research fellow Jackson Clive, she is investigating how different types and intensities of artificial light influence firefly behaviour. While their findings have yet to be formally published, their research aims to provide data on the impact of artificial lighting and to explore potential solutions for safeguarding the future of fireflies.

“I chose this research as fireflies are very charismatic in Singapore,” Ms Soh says.

“People don’t usually care about insects, but when they see fireflies, they want to save and protect them.”

Before the rise of artificial light, fireflies were once said to be abundant across Singapore’s natural landscapes. “We were looking through archival works, and there are accounts of people seeing hundreds and thousands of fireflies along the street in Singapore around the late 1800s,” Ms Soh says.

Clive adds: “It took us a while to find, but we managed to uncover some amazing evidence of people waxing lyrical about fireflies back then.”

Once a common sight across Singapore’s rivers, coastal mangroves, and forests, fireflies have become increasingly rare. Today, they survive only in a handful of protected reserves.

Urbanisation poses an equally significant threat, as these beetles rely on highly specific habitats including mangrove forests, riverbanks, and freshwater wetlands to complete their life cycles. As these areas have steadily shrunk due to development, with them so have the microhabitats that support firefly populations. The genus like Pteroptyx, the mangrove species, are particularly vulnerable.

Recognising these pressures, Ms Soh is exploring the potential for breeding fireflies in captivity to reintroduce into suitable habitats. Most species take at least five months to develop from hatchlings to adults, require a steady supply of snails for food and depend on a delicate balance of moisture to survive.

“I feel like breeding is definitely a possible solution to increase the population of fireflies in the future. However, to make it possible we really need the resources and manpower to focus on it at a large scale with a flexible timeline,” she says.

She is also studying firefly populations in nearby developing regions such as Borneo, where the environment is similarly biodiverse and home to comparable firefly species.

“I hope that studying the urban fireflies in Singapore will help inform strategies for developing countries like Borneo, so they can protect their firefly populations before it’s too late.”

Looking past the challenges, Ms Soh sees hope.

“The fact that Singapore is so urbanised, but we still have fireflies is maybe a beacon of hope,” she says.

“Maybe we can still protect them. Maybe we can bring them back.”

Fireflies are considered a bioindicator, where their presence suggests a healthy, functioning ecosystem. Losing them doesn’t just mean the end of a flickering light in the dark but also signals a deeper imbalance in the island’s biodiversity habitat and health.

“Fireflies are important because of their ecological function,” says Tok Yin Xin, the senior manager at the National Biodiversity Centre for Singapore’s National Parks Board.

 “They are good indicator species because they depend very heavily on the quality of the environment. This includes their water quality needing to be of a certain standard or the light pollution being low. So, they are quite picky you know about their environment.”

Behind the scenes of Singapore’s firefly conservation

Like Janine Soh and Jackson Clive, Tok Yin Xin is working with her team to help protect and preserve the remaining fireflies.

“Fireflies are quite charismatic. I mean they’re very romantic, right? They are like Christmas lights, just floating in nature. I think culturally people see them as something really nice and very magical.”

Tok Yin Xin

“Our main aim is to increase their population size, improve the health of the population, and improve their habitats,” says Tok.

Much of this work takes place at sites like Pasir Ris Park, where NParks has restored sections of mangrove forest, home to many of the focused species. These efforts include planting native trees, managing water flow, and even laying down fallen palm fronds on the mud to support a healthy population of snails, which firefly larvae feed on.

“We have planted a lot of trees over the years to improve and sustain the mangrove,” Tok explains, referencing their contribution to the One Million Trees movement, a nationwide greening initiative aiming to bring more nature back into the city by 2030.

NParks has also taken further steps in recent years to minimise the impact of artificial light on fireflies as well as other nocturnal species. This includes most of the parks and reserves being closed from 7pm to 7am to reduce disturbance. One of the focal nature reserves is Pasir Ris Park, where there are no lights inside the mangrove and all lights outside are wildlife friendly.

“Outside the boardwalk where the fireflies are we use lights that are of a longer wavelength being more red rather than blue” Tok says. “This is because a lot of the nocturnal animals are not so sensitive to longer wavelength lights.”

Beyond habitat restoration, Nparks works closely with researchers, including firefly taxonomist Dr Wan F.A. Jusoh, whose surveys have uncovered species previously unknown in Singapore. Some of them, still unnamed, are believed to be locally unique.

“Firefly taxonomy is not easy,” Tok says. “They’re small and hard to tell apart, but we know they exist.”

Today, signs and visitor information help raise awareness. Long-term monitoring continues, and the fireflies, as sensitive indicators of ecological health, are a quiet measure of progress.

Not only does their recovery mission aim to help protect the health of the biodiverse environments, but also aims to preserve Singapore’s natural heritage and beauty.

A city in nature, or a city over nature?

While these conservation efforts are vital, they sit within a city where nature is often curated, and the “City in Nature” label can obscure the real ecological trade-offs of urban growth.

“Singapore is extreme, tropical, and urbanised,” researcher Jackson Clive says. “That makes it a vital case study.” He points out that Singapore’s unique geographical and climatic conditions combined with its dense population and rapid development, make it a microcosm for the challenges many tropical cities now face.

With more than 80 per cent of the population living in high-rise flats and land treated as a finite resource, each decision to develop can come at a cost. A patch of cleared forest may yield space for essential housing, but it might also eliminate the last pocket of viable habitat for a native species.

“With ecology, it’s not like a sliding door where you can just go back,” Clive says. “Urbanisation has one-dimensional effects.”

Despite Singapore’s attempt to brand itself as a “City in Nature,” the ecological toll of development is significant. A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore estimated that the country has lost around 37% of its native flora and fauna species since 1819, due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and environmental pressures. Among insects, the decline is just as stark, nearly half of Singapore’s historic butterfly species have disappeared over the last century according to a report in the Straits Times, significantly reflecting the broader biodiversity losses and the growing disconnect between urban life and functioning ecosystems.

Singapore has long tried to balance development with conservation. Its green identity is supported by initiatives like wildlife corridors stitched through concrete landscapes, park connectors lacing through residential districts, and conservation strategies built into national policy. But some question whether that connection is more aesthetic than ecological.

“People in Singapore are disconnected from nature because we have very little of it,” says Janine Soh.

“We try to mark ourselves as a garden city, but it’s all curated by man. It’s not the same as going into nature reserves and experiencing healthy ecosystems.”

Reconnecting the spark

Despite the fact there is no rewind button, many advocates are working to rebuild Singaporeans’ lost connection to their natural environment.

Andrew Tay, the Co-Founder of Cicada Tree Eco Place, a community group focused on environmental education, hopes younger generations can learn to reconnect to their natural environment more.

“Most kids here grow up in air-conditioned bubbles,” he says. “They’re disconnected from wind, rain, and dirt, let alone wildlife.”

Through regularly guided nature walks, school programs and partnerships, and citizen science initiatives, Tay and his team are trying to re-wild hearts as much as habitats. “For us it’s so crucial the current generation is not overly suffering from nature deficit syndrome. We hope to improve this by bringing people outside so they’ll be more aware and continue to engage with the outdoors.”

Whether Singapore is ready to trade some of its light for darkness remains to be seen. In the meantime, fireflies remain a signal, blinking in the dark, that even in the most urban of places, nature lingers. Beneath the mangroves, the fireflies continue their quiet courtship, offering not only a glimpse of their world, but a reminder of what could be lost.

This story was produced as part of a federal government New Colombo Plan funded Curtin Journalism Singapore Study Tour.