A story for you... About a mother and her children.
Once there was a mother who had loved and provided for her children selflessly, without ever once failing her family across so many years. She had fed and clothed her children, provided them with everything they needed to succeed in the World. She had given them endless beauty and joy; she had inspired them every day from morning to night. So revered had she been by her family that they travelled the World to come home to her.
Until on one visit when they arrived, the children realised their mother was ill. Terribly ill. She was exhausted, her beauty failing, her energy depleted. She could no longer feed and clothe her children; she struggled even to provide shelter for them.
What the children had not realised, whilst their Mother had nurtured and inspired them across all the years, is that they had offered nothing in return - nothing that could sustain her. Indeed they had depleted her, blindly, lovingly, thoughtlessly.
I could offer that the Mother in this story is Ibiza. Throughout the year she is home to around 112,000 children but each summer over two million more arrive to enjoy her beautiful beaches, her rolling green hills and deep valleys, her extraordinary wild-life, her rich and vibrant sea-life. Each child loves Ibiza but often without intent, without knowledge or forethought, depletes her.
Pardon the analogy but frankly, phrases like "Conservation", "Ecosystem services" or even "Biological Conservation" tend to send many of us running for the hills, long desensitized by endless threats of extinction and world-wide disaster brought on by "global warming" and the like.
Nonetheless, having a healthy awareness, a concern for the ecological and cultural well-being of Ibiza seems not drab to this author but broad-minded and aware. I am one of the islands children, albeit adopted.
In 2008 the Ibiza Preservation Fund was formed; a grant-giving organisation looking to actively support, encourage and educate relevant parties with all matters to do with island conservation - to help slow down the depletion and destruction of Ibiza as we know her, and when possible avoid such loss completely - including but by no means limited to cultural, historical and biological island well-being.
This Thursday evening, with the combined generosity of Terravita (an island landscape and construction company that has recently enhanced its focus towards renewable energies) and the artist Dominique Sanson, the Ibiza Preservation Fund is holding an Art Auction.
Terravita have donated the premises for the event and Dominique has offered ten of his paintings for the Auction, most images of either 'at risk' or 'previously at risk' wildlife on the island. Funds raised from the Auction will be distributed across a range of well-considered areas, including a recycling waste project (an extra 2 million people per summer generates some trash...) and a project focusing on recuperation of abandoned farmland to name but two.
If you're interested in attending the event (8pm, Thursday 23rd August) or indeed would simply like to know more about the Ibiza Preservation Fund, please have a look at their website and contact them directly. The Art Auction is Invitation Only (please email them and ask to be added to the guest list - I have no doubt they would be unreservedly grateful for all support and interest received.)
