Nature lovers and staff at the Fenn’s, Whixall & Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve (NNR) outside Whitchurch are celebrating after a sighting of rare damselflies.

The Red-eyed damselflies were captured by photographer Stephen Barlow and have not been seen on the Moss since 1950.

Natural England’s Marches Mosses BogLIFE project officer Dr Joan Daniels admitted they were delighted.

She said: “This is a fantastic find by our volunteer photographer and it confirms the potential of our new method of re-wetting the outer areas of the Mosses to bring some of our very special bog species back from the brink.”

Stephen took this picture of a red-eyed damselfly, rediscovered after a lapse of 68 years on the Fenn’s, Whixall & Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve (NNR), near Whitchurch and Wrexham.

It was taken on the linear cell-dams; a new technique being used to keep rainwater on the Mosses for longer.

For the last 27 years, Natural England and Natural Resources Wales have slowly been restoring the NNR by damming up the regular pattern of damaging drains cut through the bog at 10m intervals by commercial and hand peat cutters.

This raised the bog water levels so that internationally threatened bog plants and animals could thrive once more.

European funds secured under the Marches Mosses BogLIFE Project have enabled a new technique – ‘linear cell damming’ – to be used to mend these damaged non-patterned peats.

Excavators remove surface vegetation in a line and good wet peat is dug up from below the porous damaged surface peats. This is repacked into the line and capped with the surface vegetation for protection.

Lines are connected to make 20 to 40m cells, like paddy fields, which will retain shallow water and keep the bog surface ‘squidgy’, slowing the flow of water off the bog and enabling bogmosses, cottonsedges, raft spiders, curlew, dragonflies – and damselflies – to thrive again.