Patagonia Mar y Tierra Working Group
The Patagonia Mar y Tierra ( Sea and Land) Working Group seeks to raise the level of management in national parks that have historically received little investment, develop a network of marine protected areas, secure greater protections for national reserves, and promote public-private collaboration for conservation.
The group’s founding organizations -Aumen, Centro Ballena Azul/Blue Whale Center, Melimoyu Foundation, Omora Foundation, Terram Foundation, Tompkins Conservation, WWF Chile and The Pew Charitable Trusts Chilean Patagonia Project- include diverse technical capacities in conservation science, research, education, and public policy. Jointly they seek to address the many challenges facing marine and terrestrial parks and reserves in Patagonia including improving legal protections, building planning capacity, increasing technical and financial resources, addressing threats, and monitoring.
Promoting collaborative networks and integrated marine-terrestrial conservation strategies in Chilean Patagonia
One of the region’s largest challenges is the creation of publicly protected marine areas that complement the existing terrestrial protection. To this end the Working Group promotes a network of MPAs that adequately represents all marine ecosystems, is resilient in the face of climate change and other threats, and covers the critical habitat needs of threatened species. This requires more systematic and agile processes for declaring MPAs, the creation of public financing, minimal infrastructure in each region, and monitoring programs.
Greater public-private cooperation will be critical in order to achieve integrated marine- terrestrial conserva-