Island celebration week

The month of May marked the Celebrate Islands event. Islands all around the world run weeklong events and workshops to appreciate their territories. The aim is to focus on issues of waste management, the protection of water resources, renewable energy resources, as well as biodiversity preservation and natural and cultural heritage enhancement.

Lastovo Nature Park has a lot to celebrate on a unique landscape where man meets nature. The island is one of Croatia’s youngest nature parks and one of the last 10 biodiversity treasures of the Mediterranean Sea. It is made up of 46 islands, islets, rocks and reefs home to magical forests, abundant animal and plant species, fields and villages of stone houses and chapels. The Nature park is the ideal example of how man and nature can live in harmonious coexistence.

We kicked off the week by partnering with Hyla Association for an educational workshop. Hyla works to research amphibians, reptiles, and habitats in Croatia and the Balkans in order to establish a guideline for the implementation of efficient and effective nature protection measures. They also focus on educational activities to encourage awareness. We teamed up for island week to run an awareness class for the local school in Lastovo.  

The kids got a chance to learn about the islands wildlife. We believe that we need to teach our children to love nature, not to fear it in order to create a responsible generation who will learn to care for our environment. As Steve Irwin said, “If we can teach people about wildlife, they will be touched. Because humans want to save things that they love.”

Next on the agenda was a community meeting to discuss one of the Nature parks new projects. This project is based on a French model designed by a small non-profit organisation called SMILO who focus on sustainability on small islands. This marks an important move towards a community based conservation project, which relies on the involvement and participation of Lastovo’s community. The focus of the meeting was to identify opportunities and challenges in the necessary steps towards ensuring a more sustainable future for the island.

Lastovo holidays, WWF volunteers organised a beach clean up for a group of tourists. WWF Adria and Lastovo Nature Park Islands volunteers joined to fill at least 20 bags of rubbish. It was an eye opening experiencing for both us as well as the tourists. The tourists made a pledge to use less plastic during their stay on the island, highlighting the importance of not only including the local community in conservation activities but tourists too. We found razors, toothbrushes, straws, plastic bags, plastic containers and many other items we use in our daily lives. Join us in pledging to reduce out plastic consumption. Small actions like refusing straws, and using re usable bags for our shopping can help keep our shores clean and our ocean friends safe. 

The Nature Park also ran a 2 day workshop last week to teach the community how to build their very own solar panels. We were able to make two solar panels for community members, a move towards more sustainable energy sources for the island.

Coming up in June is the Nature parks Destimed tour, a tour focused on environmentally friendly and responsible tourism on the island. The Lastovo in the stars festival is also set to take place over 22- 25 June, a 3 day long festival full of educational workshops, music and art to celebrate the island life.