What if your legacy was to leave a world worth living in for future generations?

By leaving a gift to PTES in your will you can make a big difference to the fate of our wildlife. We rely so much on our loyal donors for financial support and receive no core funding from the government. Legacy gifts are essential as they allow us to carefully plan for the future and react quickly to emergency situations. This really could mean the difference between the survival and extinction of an entire species.

Thanks to a substantial legacy, we purchased a then-neglected nature reserve on the Isle of Wight. We have worked hard to preserve and enhance this wildlife haven for over thirty years. This ancient woodland is home to hazel dormice, red squirrels, bats and owls, among other species, and now has the highest possible level of legal protection, to ensure this land remains wild for wildlife.

It was also a legacy gift that allowed us to launch the first ever public campaign to save Britain’s hedgehogs. Now, more than 120,000 people have pledged to protect hedgehogs by creating hedgehog friendly gardens, raising awareness, and making holes in their fences to connect gardens, which is critical as the lack of habitat connectivity is one of the main reasons for the hedgehog decline.

Legacies allow us to act quickly and decisively. Between 1990 and 2000, over 90% of water voles disappeared from our rivers, and when we discovered that they were on the brink of extinction, we stepped in immediately. We began by creating water vole safe havens around the UK to protect existing populations, and bolstered regional populations by releasing captive-bred water voles into the areas from where they’d gone locally extinct. We now run the National Water Vole Monitoring Programme to make sure our conservation action is working and highlight where to focus our activity.
With your help, we’re working hard to reverse the devastating loss of wildlife that is now so widespread.

By leaving a gift to PTES in your will, you can make a difference to the fate of our wildlife, and leave behind a world worth living in.

Visit ptes.org/legacy

(Image credits: Ali Taylor, Clare Pengelly, Eugeny Polonsky, Peter Eeles, Megan Gimber, Ian Schofield shutterstock.com)