The Status and Distribution of Dragonflies of the Mediterranean Basin, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources: One fifth of Mediterranean dragonflies and damselflies are threatened with extinction at the regional level as a result of increasing freshwater scarcity, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Climate change and habitat degradation, due to the way land is managed, are also affecting the insects, says the report…Their sensitivity to the quality of habitat…(e.g. forest cover, water chemistry, rivers and bank structure), their amphibious habits, and the relative ease of their identification make dragonflies well suited for use in evaluating environmental changes in the long term (biogeography, climatology) and in the short term (biology conservation, water pollution, structural alteration of running and standing waters).”