The New Patagonia National Park
The first time that Kris Tompkins and the late Douglas Tompkins visited the Chacabuco Valley was back in 1995. They had heard about the conservation potential of the area, but it was not until seeing it first-hand did they realize how urgent it was to do something to restore the damaged ecosystem.
“When I drove through the Chacabuco Valley for the first time, I saw the extra- high ‘guanaco fences’ designed to keep these first-rate jumpers out of the best bottom grasslands, which were reserved for the cattle on the estancia. My eyes glazed over looking out on the tens of thousands of sheep grazing the bunch grasses up and down the valley. The grasses looked patchy and dead. Nothing left for wildlife. Previously one of the most biologically rich areas of Patagonia, the Chacabuco Valley was a sea of sheep and cattle. Not a guanaco to be found among them,” recalls Kris Tompkins.
The Chacabuco valley is an area of critical biological importance. Running from east to west and forming a transition zone between the grasslands of the Argentine Patagonian steppes and the coigüe and ñire forests in Chile, it covers a range of ecosystems from meadows, mountains and forests to wetlands. Before recently becoming Chile’s newest national park in April, it had been sandwiched between two Chilean national reserves, and for decades Chile’s national park service (Conaf) had been interested in preserving the valley to create a larger, continuous wild protected area but lacked the means to make it happen.
For more than a century, the valley was over-exploited. First, there was a cattle ranch founded in 1908 by the English explorer Lucas Bridges.
He was succeeded by various other owners that continued with intensive sheep ranching, which led to overgrazing and the degradation and desertification of thousands of hectares of grasslands.
In 2004, Estancia Chacabuco, which at the time was one of the largest ranches in Chile, faced economic difficulties and had reached a breaking point. Then owner, Francisco de Smet, agreed to sell the 70,000 hectares to Conservacion Patagónica, an organization created by Kris Tompkins with the mission of creating new national parks in Patagonia.
With a passionate team that included locals as well as volunteers from around the world, they commenced with an ambitious rewilding project. The initial tasks were enormous: removing hundreds of kilometers of fencing; eliminating all nonnative plants; selling off 30,000
sheep and 3,800 cattle; and developing high quality public access infrastructure that was durable and harmonious with its surrounding environment, such as camping areas, trails, a visitor center, museum, restaurant, lodge and an organic garden.
Carolina Morgado, executive director of Tompkins Conservation (Conservacion Patagonica’s work is now done through this new organization) recalls that in the process of transforming the Chacabuco ranch into a national park, the organization had to face - and still does - opposition from locals with a deep-seated cultural tradition of sheep herding. “People are slowly starting to understand that conservation can also mean economic development through a good tourism that is a consequence of conservation. It is something that takes time; at least that is the way we see it,” says Morgado.
Their work at Patagonia Park had the benefit of learning from their previous experience at Pumalín Park, which faced fierce criticism nationwide at the outset. Today, public opinion has changed radically in Chile. And just outside of Pumalin Park at the town of Chaitén, once a hotbed of the complaints, the locals nowadays point with pride to the park, which has
been key in helping them rebuild after the 2008 eruption of a nearby volcano. The same benefits could be reaped by Cochrane and Chile Chico, two towns located near Patagonia National Park.
Wildlife returns
Today, Chacabuco Valley is a far cry from what the Tompkins’ saw when they first visited. Some 15 years later, the grasslands have regained their vitality, partly because of human labor, but also thanks to guanacos, a species that is an excellent seed disperser and fertilizer, and which prevent the domination of grass species.
The removal of more than 400 kilometers of livestock fences that previously fragmented the habitat and blocked the passage of these animals was also key.
The guanacos have recovered and recolonized their living space in great numbers, and have become an icon of the park. It’s easy to see them, crossing again and again, agile and fast, along the gravel road when entering the park, or lurking among the park buildings. Adults, juveniles and chulengos (calves) now exercise their reign without the presence of wired fencing or having to compete with domestic livestock, although of course... they are
not alone. Its main predator, the puma, prowls around and has also become commonplace in the area, even seen with some frequency at the visitor center and camping areas.
The abundance of native fauna now there is nothing short of amazing. The return of the guanaco is but the tip of a big iceberg, representing just a small sample of the work that has been done to restore wildlife to this area. Also on the rise in the park: Andean fox, pampas cat, Molina’s hog-nosed skunks, and countless birds such as austral pygmy owls, southern crested caracaras, flamingos, black-faced ibis, Chilean flicker, eagles, and condors.
Cristián Saucedo, a veterinarian and conservation director of Tompkins Conservation, joined the Patagonia Park project in 2005 and was put in charge of developing and implementing the species recovery program. His objective was to reduce the threats to endangered species and help them grow in numbers and in distribution. He says there were few successful examples elsewhere to draw upon. They began by putting an end to hunting, particularly of species such as the puma and fox, which had been persecuted for centuries.
Given its status as an endangered species, from day one they also focused much of their attention on the huemul deer. Distribution of this native deer species had shrunk significantly because of pressure from livestock farming. As a result, specific areas were set aside for this species and they began tagging individuals and monitoring populations in order to track their movements. Over time the indicators improved greatly: today there is a larger population, a much greater frequency of sightings, and more young fawns are surviving.
“Today, the return of the guanaco is but the tip of a big iceberg, representing just a small sample of the work that has been done in the park to restore wildlife.”
“We started in areas with only two or three huemuls and today these same places are home to more than 30. The results have been gradual, not exponential, but we have seen concrete results. The huemul population i n the park accounts for more than 10% of the total remaining huemul population in southern Chile and Argentina ( about 200 animals). In time, they could gradually repopulate other areas and connect the different populations, which is vital to have a genetic flow of individual animals from one sector to another,” says Saucedo.
In 2008, they also began the first research in Chile into the interaction between huemuls and pumas. At first, it was feared that huemul populations would suffer if the hunting of pumas stopped. But due to the large numbers of guanacos, they have come to make up 90% of the pumas’ diet, while huemuls never exceed more
than 2%, according to Saucedo. This confirmed the puma’s key role in regulating the population of guanacos. For sure, they also knew that just by ending hunting it would also help the puma to recover. After six years, research shows that there is indeed a healthy population of puma, and it is relatively stable and self-regulating.
At the end of 2014, the rewilding program started to focus on rheas. Studies indicated that there was a population of just 15 animals in the upper part of the valley, near the border with Argentina. Thanks to an agreement with Chile’s Agricultural and Livestock Service (SAG), a captive breeding program was set up to reproduce rheas and then release them into the wild. The initiative also helps diversify the gene pool of the wild populations whose members are all interrelated. Most important, they seek to ensure the long-term survival of rheas, an endangered species that is only sparsely populated throughout the Aysén region. Their efforts are bearing fruit as today there are 40 rheas roaming freely inside Patagonia Park.
What’s next?
When Tompkins Conservation bought the Chacabuco valley lands it always intended to seek to merge them with the Jeinimeni National Reserve (located to the north) and the Tamango National Reserve (located to the south) to form a larger Patagonia National Park of 304,527 hectares, which would also mean biological corridors for wildlife in the area.
After many meetings, and over the suspicions and rejections from surrounding communities, in 2017 an even bigger agreement was reached that would become the largest private land donation in history. They signed a protocol with the Chilean
government establishing five new national parks and the expansion of three others, thanks to the donation of more than 407,625 hectares by Tompkins Conservation and the rest coming from contributions of state-owned land. On April 26, 2019, Patagonia National Park was officially transferred to Conaf, Chile’s national park service.
The handover of the Patagonia and Pumalín parks to the Chilean state comes with a 10year, renewable, agreement for Tompkins Conservation and the government to collaborate on a variety of issues, including ensuring that high standards for conservation and the visitor experience are maintained, according to Chile agriculture minister Antonio Walker.
In the case of Patagonia Park, there is a specific ap
pendix i n which Tompkins Conservation commits to continue financing and managing the wildlife recovery program for the next decade working closely with Conaf. That will also include Saucedo continuing on in his current role. Conaf says it moreover is interested in replicating the program at other parks and protected areas. “We expect to carry out training and knowledge transfer to our staff regarding the progress and main achievements seen to date. This joint work ought to be able to create coordinated action plans and evaluate its potential replication in other protected areas over the long term,” José Manuel Rebolledo, executive director of Conaf, said in an interview.
In addition, both parties are currently working on drawing up administrative and technical bidding rules for an ecotourism services concession that also
includes the lodge and restaurant. “This encompasses the main existing infrastructure and is designed to be awarded for the 2019-2020 season. In parallel, concessions for the main camping areas will be tendered with the aim of providing opportunities to different players and, hopefully, to the local community,” says Rebolledo.
There is some concern about what will happen to the concessions in the Patagonia and Pumalin parks over the long-term. In order to raise financing to manage the expanded park system in Chilean Patagonia, could Conaf veer toward the Torres del Paine model, which has become saturated with expensive hotels and crowded trails in its high season? Kris Tompkins told Patagon Journal at her office in Puerto Varas that she is confident that Conaf will not “downgrade the parks.”
“National parks are in service to rewilding and building fully functioning ecosystems.”
“Our job is to support Conaf, not trash them,” said Tompkins. “The concept we have is that the communities around the parks should be benefiting with the number of bed stays per year. That said, on a smaller scale, whoever takes the concessions I think would expand more rooms. When we donated the parks, we turned it over with a giant architectural book. With things like, if you build like this, here’s the paint chip color, etc. We have a book that is two inches thick just on architecture.”
Tompkins said the 10-year agreement also includes a zonification plan on where and what new tourism infrastructure can be built so that it will “not hinder the nature of the park itself.” But there are no guarantees that Chile will keep to their zoning recommendations in the future. “Fifteen years from now, we don’t have a say in that. And we probably don’t today, it’s just that there is an agreement and understanding of cooperation and collaboration.”
Adds Tompkins: “But if something happened in Pumalin, for example. In 100 years, if there is still a million acres of prime temperate rainforest that’s what you are going for anyway. You are not trying necessarily to preserve the restaurant. At the end of the day, what’s most important is you hope that the parks are rewild and flourishing, and those grasslands and temperate rainforests are healthy.”
According t o Tompkins Conservation, Patagonia Park operations require about 584 million pesos (US$ 850,000) annually, which almost doubles to 1.084 billion pesos (US$ 1.6 million) if including Pumalín. Conaf will have a budget of just 350 million pesos ( US$
516,000) in 2019 for hiring human and operational resources for these parks. “We will take the necessary steps, in the short term, to strengthen our initial management and invest greater resources in managing these and other protected wild areas in the country,” said Rebolledo, adding that they will incrementally increase the budget for these new parks so that by 2022 they could potentially have all the resources they need.
The Route of Parks of Patagonia
In parallel, together with the creation of the new parks in Patagonia surged the idea to promote them globally as a Route of Parks of Patagonia, a 2,800 kilometer (1,700 miles) scenic route linking 17 national parks, located between Puerto Montt and Cape Horn, and covering Chile’s three southernmost regions and 11.5 million hectares of protected areas.
In May 2019, they announced how they would finance this new network of parks in Patagonia. Called Route of Parks Fund: Protecting Patagonia Forever, a public-private fund led by the Chilean government, Tompkins Conservation and Pew Charitable Trusts. The agreement seeks to raise money to finance infrastructure, trails, personnel, and equipment to help the Chilean park system match and surpass international standards; foster nature conservation and rewilding projects; and catalyze economic development in the communities surrounding the parks to help them benefit from the significant boost in global tourism the region is likely to witness in the years ahead.
The fund is very welcome in Chile which is currently only investing US$ 5.1 million per year in its national parks in Patagonia. The initiative will
be patterned after a conservation finance model called Project Finance for Permanence (PFP), a strategy which in the recent past has successfully led to significant private investment to protect land and marine habitat in Costa Rica, the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, and the British Columbia coastal rainforest in Canada.
The Forever Costa Rica program is an example of how this approach works. Prompted by then Costa Rica President Oscar Arias, who in 2007 declared a goal of funding the nation’s protected area system in perpetuity and doubling their marine reserve system, The Nature Conservancy and other private conservation organizations came together to successfully raise US$ 57 million f rom i nternational sources to fund the plan and in return the Costa Rica government increased its own funding for protected areas, restructured its natural resource management agency, and greatly expanded its marine protected areas. Today, Costa Rica spends US$ 30 per hectare in its national parks, as compared to Chile, which
currently spends just US$ 1.54 per hectare in its parks.
The plan for Patagonia’s national parks will though veer more toward the approach used in British Columbia, Canada. The Nature Conservancy, along with several foundations, set aside half of the $ US 100 million they raised for the fund there to finance an economic development fund for 26 indigenous tribes l i ving i n or near the coastal rainforests. Similarly, according to Francisco Solis, director of the Pew Charitable Trust’s program in Chile’s Patagonia region, the fund proposed for Patagonia’s parks will place an emphasis on giving “equal attention to community benefits and enhanced nature protections.”
Meanwhile, Kris Tompkins emphasizes that the incredible achievement in establishing Patagonia National Park and four other new national parks in Patagonia was not because of Tompkins Conservation alone, she says the real credit must be given to the Chilean government. “Without a government, you don’t have national parks,” she said. “Chile as a country should be super celebrated. It is extraordinary.”
Ultimately, Tompkins says the biggest win in all this is not the creation of these national parks in and of themselves, but their potential role in achieving a larger goal: reversing the global extinction crisis and bringing back extirpated species. If you take the long view, and think centuries into the future, she says national parks have the best chance of success. “If it is just private property, or a regional park, you don’t have the strength built into the system,” she says. “National parks are all in service to rewilding and building fully functioning ecosystems.”