ONE of the North-East's rarest insects returned to a nature reserve where reedbeds were restored to save them being lost for ever.

The Banded Demoiselle damselfly (calopteryx splendens), which is at the northernmost edge of its British range, has returned to Billingham Beck Country Park on the edge of Billingham.

The reason is the revival of the park's reedbeds through a £5,000 project started in 1998 by Stockton Borough Council, which owns the park, and helped by hydrological work carried out by Inca.

Funding came through the Landfill Tax Credit scheme, via ICI Chemicals and Polymers Ltd and ConocoPhillips Petroleum.

In 1998, the 3.8 hectares of reedbeds were in danger because the construction of the A19 in the 1970s meant their natural water sources were severely disrupted. There was a risk they would dry out, robbing insects and birds of valuable habitat.

Wetlands are an internationally important habitat increasingly under threat from land development, so project engineers re-routed existing water through a system of sluices.

The reedbeds were restored to their former glory, and this is capped by the arrival of the Banded Demoiselle. One of several rare damselflies at the site, they have vivid blue/green bodies. Common in southern England, they have been steadily moving northwards as the climate becomes warmer.

Their previous northern strongholds included small wetland pockets on Teesside and they have been reported along the banks of the river Swale, in North Yorkshire, and in increasing numbers on the Wear, in County Durham. Their presence is always significant because Banded Demoiselles prefer pure, unpolluted water in which to rear their young.

Stockton Borough Council adopted the insect as one of its target species for the borough and Billingham Beck Country Park managers chose it for particular attention as part of the Adopt-a-Species programme instigated by Inca.

Published: 30/03/2004