Rare dragonflies discovered at Mar Lodge Estate

Invertebrate specialists doing survey work for the Trust at Mar Lodge Estate, the UK’s largest National Nature Reserve (NNR), have spotted the brightly coloured azure hawker dragonfly and the iridescent northern emerald dragonfly, listed as vulnerable and near threatened respectively in the British Odonata List 2008. The rare dragonflies were recorded during baseline monitoring undertaken in advance of peatland restoration work starting on the Deeside estate this winter.

The sightings of the dragonfly species, usually seen whizzing over boggy moorlands in the north and west of Scotland, are part of a wider discovery of species at Mar Lodge, with an amazing 72 invertebrate and 44 spider species found. Among these, 41 invertebrate species were identified on the NNR for the first time, of which eight are nationally scarce. Also recorded for the first time were 36 types of spider, with five nationally scarce tiny money spiders making up part of this cohort, raising the total number of species recorded to date on Mar Lodge Estate to 5,260.

Shaila Rao, Conservation Manager at Mar Lodge Estate, said: ‘We’re thrilled to find these rare species of dragonfly at Mar Lodge, only the first and second time, respectively, they have been recorded in Deeside, and we’re excited to discover an abundance of new species alongside them, including five nationally scarce tiny money spiders that have set up home on the estate. It’s a really special moment for us and we are very excited to see how the species will respond to the peatland restoration work carried out this autumn.’

‘After three years of restoration work by the National Trust for Scotland, we’ve restored nearly 250 hectares of peatland; that’s equivalent in size to roughly 350 football pitches, which demonstrates the scale of our achievements so far. We are keen to observe how the restored peatland is affecting the biodiversity of the nature reserve and undertook our baseline monitoring to produce data that will be used as a benchmark to measure how the interventions we are taking to restore degraded peatland has on the nature and wildlife going forward.