This pressie that protects goes directly to creating new wildflower meadows for bumblebees Here's how your gift works: Your donation goes directly towards creating new wildflower meadows on our reserves. Choose whether to add a £5 RSPB gift card to spend online or in any RSPB shop by adding your desired option to the basket. Add your personal message below (not available on mobile, sorry). Your message will be printed on a special greeting card which features information on the worthwhile cause. The greeting card will then be sent wherever you want. If you are sending multiple pressies that protect direct to your friends & family you will need to place each order separately, putting the recipients address in the ‘delivery address’ section when you checkout. Delivery is free on pressies that protect. You only pay p&p on other items that you order at the same time. Order before 1 pm & we'll do our best to get the card printed & dispatched via first class post the same day, but please allow 3-4 working days. For more information on how pressies that protect work click here Two species of bumblebee are already extinct in the UK! Your donation will help provide a home for bumblebees on our Dungeness Nature Reserve. There's something so comforting about the hum of bees at work in a summer meadow. But recently it has grown quieter. Our bumblebees are in trouble. Since the war, the need to meet an increased demand for food, along with improvements in agricultural technology, has lead to much of the bumblebee’s important habitat being lost. Fields, which were once coloured by a range of wildflowers, are now plain green, used for the growing of crops or grazing of livestock. In fact, it is estimated that 97% of the UK’s flower-rich grasslands have been lost since the 1930s. Some parts of the country have held on to their bumblebees, one such area being Dungeness. In this unique & beautiful part of Kent, the plentiful wildflowers mean that many rare & threatened bumblebees can still find a home. To make things even better for these precious populations, the RSPB’s Dungeness nature reserve has tailored its reserve management to help bumblebees. Wild flowers are encouraged to prosper in the reserve’s grasslands, through sensitive grazing & other management practices. To increase the numbers of flowers, cut hay which is rich in seed, known as green hay, is spread around the grasslands. These ongoing efforts have produced fantastic results, with the grasslands a haze of rich yellow, violet & mauve colour in spring & summer. Many of the rare bumblebees that occur on the reserve have increased in number & the high quality of the habitat we are providing has led to the reserve being chosen as the point of reintroduction for the previously extinct short-haired bumblebee, last seen in the UK at Dungeness in the 1980s. This pressie that protects makes all this work possible. On behalf of the wildlife at Dungeness, thank you. A little something for you, a whole lot for nature.