A day long art exhibition was held in Kathmandu Guest House on 1 July 2012 in partnership with BirdLife International and Darwin Initiative. Esther Tyson, an artist from UK exhibited 43 paintings and sketches reflecting people, landscape and birdlife.
The exhibition also reflected an ecosystem service which are extremely broad, and represent all that nature provides and on which humanity depends. These include water and food, including harvested wild goods, pollination, pest control, climate regulation, soil fertility, nutrient cycling, as well as spiritual, recreational, and cultural benefits. Ms Tyson says, “ultimately my work included a wide range of landscape drawings of watersheds, lakes, and forests, to much more intimate pictures of fauna and flora, and particularly people working in the rural villages.”
Further, the exhibition was also on vulture conservation and she shared her experience as, “positive human-vulture interaction is essential, and I was lucky enough to visit two of the primary initiatives where local communities are involved: the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (VCBC) at Kasara; and the Jatayu Restaurants at Ghachowk and Pithauli. VCBC represents the combined efforts of the consortium SAVE (Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction) to conserve Critically Endangered vultures. Currently, the centre houses 59 Oriental White-rumped Vultures.”