Recently, LIPU (BirdLife in Italy) and Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, one of the main Italian banks, set up a credit card that helps nature. This topped-up card is safe and easy to use, both in Italy and abroad, and LIPU receives 3 Euros for every card issued.

So far this initiative has been a great success, with 1,800 credit cards activated. "The idea behind the card to help nature is a great initiative", says Sara Orlandi, Fundraiser at LIPU. "The nature credit card is also cheaper than other cards and you can easily top it up with the home banking system. But most importantly it supports LIPU’s work in protecting our environment".

Created in 1965, LIPU was the first Italian association dealing with environmental and bird protection. Displayed on the front of each credit card is a pair of White Storks Ciconia ciconia. This species migrate from their breeding grounds in the warmer parts of Europe and northwest Africa to spend their non-breeding period mainly in tropical Africa, down to the bottom of South Africa.

During their long migrations, White Stork glide between areas of rising hot air – a technique known as soaring. This method, which cannot be used over large water bodies or high mountains, limits their potential routes and concentrates birds into narrow geographic corridors and through tight ‘bottlenecks’.

This concentration makes soaring migrants highly vulnerable to localised threats. White Stork suffer from habitat loss through habitat change, hunting, collision with man-made structures such as power lines and wind turbines, and secondary poisoning.

BirdLife has successfully reduced illegal hunting migratory birds in the Mediterranean, and has launched a new ‘Migratory Soaring Birds’ project, to protect the passage of soaring birds and tackle threats in the Middle East and Africa. Click here to read more.

This news is brought to you by Born to Travel - BirdLife's Flyways Campaign. To read more about the BirdLife Partnership’s global work to save migratory birds, click here.

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Credits: LIPU (BirdLife in Italy)

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