Welcome to the Dorset Dragonflies and Damselflies Facebook Group
In March 2026 a new, public Facebook Group was set up. Join us at Dorset Dragonflies & Damselflies Facebook Group
We always need more information about where species are to be found, so anyone can contribute by recording their sightings. This isn’t done via Facebook. Instead you can use Living Record, a Dorset-specialist online recording tool, or iRecord, our national database, or iNaturalist, a photo-oriented international recording site. Remember, we always need a grid reference for a record.
Contacts
Your help is needed!
If you would like to get more involved in the conservation of dragonflies there’s no better way than to go out and record where they are found.
Recording where, when and the numbers of dragonflies seen is vitally important for the following reasons:
- Breeding Sites: It’s important to know where Dragonfly breeding sites are so that our knowledge of each species habitat requirements broadens. Evidence of breeding is extremely important so looking for newly emerged insects, (tenerals) or finding exuvia is considered vital.
- Diversity Hotspots: It would be useful to know where high diversity sites are. Who are they managed by? What factors make them great dragonfly sites?
- Distribution: To understand how dragonflies are distributed throughout the countryside. Are they common? Are they only found at a few sites? Why?
- Populations: To monitor populations over time to see if there are increasing or declining.
- Future Management: All the above information can be fed into management decisions about present and future habitat management for dragonfly species.
Image: Golden-Ringed Dragonfly by Jane Adams
How you can get involved
The best & fastest method of sending in your sightings and records is to use Living Record a new online recording system. You can use Living Record as your own personal records system to keep track of the wildlife that you see. Records are linked to location markers that you add to Google Maps. Your records are treated as personal to you. Other users do not see the details of your records, apart from the experts who are responsible for verifying records before they are passed on to local record centres. There is a growing list of subjects that you can record, from mammals to moths, amphibians to wasps and plants.
This fast and user friendly system is easy to use, please click on the link below to get started: Living Record
Your records will not only be of local importance but have contributed to the British Dragonfly Societies National Atlas, which was published in 2014, and contains the very latest information about the status of dragonflies nationally.
Kindly funded by the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL)
All Dorset Dragonflies Group photographs by kind permission & © of Ken Dolbear unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved.