Jan. 24, 2026
By JULIA BUSKIRK
ONTARIO, Wis. – A soft orange glow illuminates Scott Lind as he points up at several streetlamps outside of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve’s Visitor Center. He has outfitted them with low-temperature LED bulbs set to shine at their lowest brightness. Behind him, twilight has turned the sky a deep purple, and the first stars are peaking out across the valley.
4,000K LEDs which are commonly installed.
Lind is an electrical engineer working across the Kickapoo Valley to help darken the sky. Several years ago, the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, and neighboring Wildcat State Park and Tunnelville State Natural Area, were on their way to being designated as Dark Sky Sanctuaries. This title is bestowed by the International Dark Sky Alliance to land across the globe that maintains exceptional nocturnal environments free of light pollution, and has a rigorous application process that requires years of light monitoring.
Susan Cushing and John Heasley, local educators, began measuring light levels in these three parks in 2020. But within 30 months of monitoring, light levels in Wildcat State Park had increased by 51% and in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve by 61%.
“Suddenly we couldn’t be a dark sky park and we were astounded,” said Cushing. “It was heartbreaking to realize that our night sky here [is] going away.”
Lind, while disappointed, was not dissuaded. Instead of focusing on the Dark Sky Designation, he turned his head towards the lights. Together with other community members, Lind started the Dark Sky Initiative, a group focused on lowering light pollution throughout the valley.
“When we say dark skies, some people think we want everything black all the time, everything is black all the time,” Lind said. “No, that’s not true. We know we need light, it’s part of culture, it’s part of our society.”
The key, Lind said, is the right kind of light.
Over the last several years, many local municipalities transitioned to LED bulbs for streetlamps, a shift Lind himself was recommending to clients, as the bulbs are cheaper and more energy efficient than their high pressure sodium predecessors. But Lind realized something else was happening––the blue color of LEDs scatters more than any other color, throwing more light into the atmosphere and brightening up our night skies, a trend being documented nationwide.
Lind has begun advocating for a transition to lower-temperature 1,800K LEDs, which the eye reads as a warm orange-ish glow. Lower-temperature LEDs cost the same as higher-temperature LEDs, and can decrease the amount of light pollution up to 70%. Lind has also been setting the LEDs he installs to their lowest light levels, which saves users up to 60% of their costs and decreases light pollution, while the dimming is hardly noticeable to the human eye.
At the Ontario Fire Department, Lind replaced all their fixtures, a mixture of 5,000K LEDs, high pressure sodium lights, and incandescent bulbs, with 1800K LEDs, which decreased light pollution by about 70%. He believes the best way to get people on board is to show people examples in real life.
“If I can get as many streetlights changed as possible and get as many commercial buildings changed as possible, that will set a tone that people can follow,” Lind said. “It changes the tone of what this should look like.”
It also helps assure people that places still feel safe and are properly illuminated, Lind explains. Many municipalities are making the conversion to lower temperature LEDs across the valley, including Ontario, La Farge, and Wilton.
Why is darkness important?
“We can have a great impact on saving carbon emissions, at the same time we can save money, at the same time we can make the sky darker,” said Lind.
But Lind’s main motivation for lowering light pollution is for the other species around us.
“Because they don’t own [the artificial light], they can’t control it, they have no way to adapt quickly enough. We’ve only had artificial light for a couple hundred years, these species have been around for millennia, and that’s how they’ve adapted to their environment and so when we take away that environment from them, all they can do is try to find a place that’s less impacted,” Lind said.
Nearly all aspects of life, from reproduction and growth, to rest and migration, are impacted by the cycles of daytime light and nighttime darkness. The full extent of artificial light’s impact on animal and plant life is still being understood. Artificial light is impacting the growth of trees in cities, altering the migration patterns of birds, and potentially an overlooked factor in the rapid decrease of insect populations.
These impacts extend to humans. A 2024 public health study followed 90,000 people across the United Kingdom and found that exposure to artificial light at night and lack of natural daylight during the day predicted higher mortality rates. The correlation between a person’s quality of health and their light exposure was evident even when the researchers controlled for factors like socioeconomic advantage, income and physical activity.
Susan Cushing leads nighttime walks at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and Wildcat Mountain State Park to show people firsthand the benefits and beauty of darkness.
“I try to get people out in the dark experiencing it, and what night means, what night is, and get people not afraid of it anymore,” said Cushing. She encourages the people on her darkness walks to “Go slow, pay attention, and keep your light off so your eyes adjust to the dark. Then, everyone begins noticing different things.”
Sometimes it’s a smell trail, and their noses lead them to a flower bush that’s recently bloomed. During wintertime, it’s often the sharply shining stars that draw people’s eye, and the brightness of the snow. Fireflies always delight children and adults alike.
“Darkness is half of our day. It’s half of life,” Cushing said. “It’s half of it, and when you don’t know anything about it, you’re afraid of it, and you have no contact with it, and you’re missing half of what the world has created for a life cycle.”
Cushing is secretary for the Kickapoo Valley Dark Sky Initiative. Both Cushing and Lind are energized by the successes they’re seeing.
“The most effective thing you can do is find a building in your community that you have some influence over,” Lind said. “Get that building’s [light fixtures] converted––like the ones we’ve done in Ontario, like the ones we’ve done in La Farge, like the ones we did in Wilton, elsewhere––because once you’ve succeeded in doing that, now you have an example for people to see and live with, rather than just talking in the abstract.”
“There are a lot of problems we’re really frightened about and don’t have a solution for, what’s going to happen,” said Cushing. “But this one, folks, we now have all the answers for it,” she said. “We just have to do it.”
More information can be found at Kickapoo Valley Dark Sky Initiative.
Juila Buskirk is a graduate of UW-Madison where she studied conservation biology and journalism. She currently writes, paints, and reports in Southwestern Wisconsin.
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