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The Conservatoire de la costière tournonaise has the following aims:
Fauna and flora
- to make an inventory of the riches of the fauna and flora of its lands (which, thanks to the Conservatoire d’espaces naturels (CEN), the regional body for the conservation of natural areas, we already know to be rich in dry grasslands, 50 to 70% of which disappeared in France during the 20th century), an inventory it will carry out drawing on the expertise of scientists and of other associations specialising in the study and protection of fauna and flora;
- to map the territory;
- to preserve the existing dry grasslands by mechanical clearing or by grazing (by acquiring a small flock, or through agreements with stock-breeders, farmers, etc.);
- to give these dry grasslands back the extent they had before farming withdrew from the land;
- to make an inventory of the woods and forests, and to ensure their sustainable management; Note from 2021: as our project evolves through what we learn from our naturalist friends, it has been decided that part, but only part, of these woods and forests will be left to “free evolution”, without human intervention, according to the principle “dead trees, sources of life”.
- to assess the condition of its streams and their banks, and to protect them;
- to take action on behalf of the various animal species recorded: by installing posts for their study and observation (nocturnal birds of prey, genets, bats, beavers, amphibians, butterflies, etc.); by setting up an apiary; by drilling a well for a watering place; by maintaining the existing hedges and planting new ones where they are needed.
Small rural heritage
Once the plant and animal heritage has been conserved and restored, the Conservatoire will work to conserve and rehabilitate the existing vernacular small rural heritage: stone-built springs, dry-stone walls, vineyard huts, challeys (terraced vine plots), etc. The vineyard huts could house scientists and nature observers; the terraces could receive a small walled vineyard — possibly in partnership with winegrowers of the region.
The Conservatoire will also take care of the verges of the road that crosses it, sowing them with flowers to make them more beautiful, but also and above all to encourage the spread of useful insects and to help pollination by bees. It may also install rope bridges for squirrels and work to protect the movement of amphibians (salamanders, etc.).
Study and research
In addition, the Conservatoire will work to raise the awareness of the public — and, when necessary, of the public authorities as well.
To raise public awareness, it may, in partnership with other, more specialised associations, organise educational visits for schoolchildren, senior citizens, companies and their staff. It may also organise meetings, lectures and debates, and so take part in environmental education.
It may also open itself, with respect for the fauna and flora, to associations and cultural events — and particularly to those that promote music from before 1800, and baroque music most especially.
The Conservatoire — intending to be a space devoted to study and research — will make itself available, in partnership with associations, universities, etc., to students and researchers wishing to undertake or deepen their study of the plant, animal or geological resources of its territory (for example, the study of its old mines).
Finally, the Conservatoire de la costière tournonaise is also, and above all, a work of conceptual art, sensualist-naturalist, in which the artist’s ego has effaced itself so as to be content — in every sense of the word — with protecting natural beauty; a work in which it is no longer the spectator, the beholder, who makes the nature of the picture — the inaugural proposition of modern art in the 20th century — but rather the picture of nature that undoes — poetically, contemplatively — the spectator, the beholder: the liminal proposition of this sensualist art, which opens the 21st century.
It is thus a work that belongs to the current of “integral naturalism” — set out as early as 1978 by Pierre Restany in his Rio Negro Manifesto — or of “ecological art”, but placed within a vaster philosophical perspective whose origins go back at least to Ovid: that of the history of sentimentality, but also of contemplation, in Europe, united here for the first time, in direct continuation of the form of union sought by the trobairitz Beatritz de Dia and Bieiris de Romans some eight hundred years ago, in this very region of the world — a union of which this Conservatoire is at once the setting and the poetic manifestation.