new delhi delhi will celebrate its firstever dragonfly festival this month starting friday the festival jointly being organized by wwf india and the bombay natural history society bnhs will have fun events on both dragonflies and damselfly species and will culminate towards a dragonfly census on august 19experts said dragonflies and damselflies similar to dragonflies and belonging to the same family play a key role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem and are crucial in controlling mosquito population in the past delhi had recorded 51 dragonfly and damselfly species however the documentation is quite old and was done decades ago we plan to collect fresh data on dragonfly and damselfly species in the city just like the butterfly census of last year says sohail madan centremanager at bnhs in asolathe festival will be inaugurated on august 3 at the wwf auditorium with some special events including be a scientist for a day date with a dragonfly field trips at okhla bird sanctuary and campus counts across ncr teams from bnhs and wwf india will carry out the census on august 19 mapping species from different areas across ncrdragonflies and damselflies have been an integral part of urban biodiversity for a long time and till their habitat was safe and their numbers sufficient they kept the population of disease carrying mosquitoes to a minimum with drastic changes in our city the deadly cases of dengue and malaria are on the rise madan addedindia has about 500 different types of species at present while around 3012 species were recorded worldwide until 2010 experts say the best spots to observe dragonflies are either wetland habitats or forested areas during the monsoonsthey prefer living close to waterbodies as the creature lay eggs on water in ncr they are easily sighted in large numbers at okhla bird sanctuary and asola bhatti wildlife sanctuary said madan we will also give people a guidebook at the festival on how to identify different species and they can then take part in the census with us the bnhs manager added