Nice to see that "swatting with badminton rackets" isn't endangering them enough to make the article. As someone who was raised in a firefly-dense rural area, let me tell you, the thrill of the bioluminescent sparks is the closest I got to cocaine as a kid.
30 years ago we caught them in glass jars. They were so dense in rural Missouri that you could catch several at a time by swinging an open container through the air.
In this rural area the closest kids get to cocaine is methamphetamine.
I was born in and spent most of my life in the bay area before moving to Kansas City over 10 years ago (long story).
Seeing fireflies for the first time, in my 30s, was (and still is) magical.