August is our birthday month as People’s Trust for Endangered Species turns 40 years old. PTES exists to conserve species worldwide that are rare or threatened with extinction, which we tackle through education and scientific research to benefit wildlife and people.
Can you help celebrate and protect wildlife for the future by supporting us with a donation? Thank you.
Here are just a few of our conservation highlights – all made possible by your support:
Research
• Since 1983 PTES has supported over 350 amazing research projects worldwide on a dizzying array of species
• Over 50 supported internships have helped young conservationists set out on their careers
Through our worldwide grants scheme, we support dozens of international conservation projects; a few successes include:
• Evidence of unsustainable fishing of seahorses in Guinea and Senegal led to CITES suspension of seahorse trade
• The number of bonobos in a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo has increased by 30% in just five years, once PTES supplied park rangers with SMART technology to combat
UK priority species and habitats
In prioritising species and habitats for attention in the UK, PTES particularly focuses on wild mammals, certain invertebrates and the woodlands, hedgerows, traditional orchards and wood pastures upon which they depend.
• PTES invested in over 100 projects on our native mammals helping most of the species on the UK conservation priority list
• PTES supported the reintroduction of beavers to Knapdale in Scotland after 400 years’ absence
• PTES created safe havens for water voles and launched the National Water Vole Monitoring Programme, a long-term national monitoring/research survey in 2015
• Through Hedgehog Street over 42,000 Hedgehog Champions across the UK are making their neighbourhoods hedgehog friendly, while research projects are studying the causes of the decline
• To date, PTES has reintroduced more than 864 hazel dormice at 22 different sites across 12 English counties, over the last 24 years. PTES is linking them together by improving and planting hedgerows between woodland sites
• As species champion for stag beetles, PTES set up the Great Stag Hunt, to monitor stag beetles at the edge of their European range, and pioneered stag beetle-friendly gardening, such as building log piles
• Following the first condition audit of the thousands of traditional orchards in England and Wales, PTES works closely with owners to enhance orchard biodiversity
• In this anniversary year, PTES launched a new conservation project to protect wood pastures and parkland (great havens for invertebrates), currently being piloted in Suffolk
Protecting landscapes
In the early 1990s, PTES purchased Briddlesford Woods on the Isle of Wight. This nature reserve (which is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area for Conservation, giving it the highest legal protection) contains many threatened species including red squirrels, hazel dormice and Bechstein bats.
• Over twenty years PTES has transformed the neglected woodland into a wildlife haven used as a beacon of excellence in conservation management
• Over 500 dormouse boxes are monitored four times a year as part of the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme
PTES also owns and manages Rough Hill, a beautiful small, traditional orchard on the banks of the River Avon in Worcestershire. It contains around 40 old apple trees, 65 young apples and 25 young plum trees and is a haven for insect life. Recently, 19 nationally scarce species were recorded, and four Red Data Book listed species. Rough Hill is also home to the harvest mouse, the great dodder (a parasitic plant) and the lesser horseshoe bat.
• PTES is transforming this area from a piece of land invaded by scrub with many dead and dying trees, to a fine example of a well-managed traditional orchard and wildlife reserve
Can you help celebrate and protect wildlife for the future by supporting us with a donation? Thank you.