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Laguna del Laja National Park
© Mark Godfrey/TNC
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Places We Work: Chile
It's no wonder that Chile's biological diversity intrigued Charles Darwin, whose scientific observations there helped him to formulate his theory of evolution. The country is home to 18-inch-high deer and sequoia-like trees that can live up to 4,000 years. Chile's geographic position - the Pacific Ocean to the west, Atacama Desert to the north, Andes Mountains to the east and glaciers to the south - means many plant and animal species are isolated. More than half of the country's species are found nowhere else on Earth.
Since 1997, The Nature Conservancy has been collaborating with partners in Chile to conserve the ecologically important lands and waters for people and for nature.
Remarkably, even though Chile has an extensive park system, many of its prized species aren't included in those boundaries. Because many of Chile's most biodiverse areas are located on private lands, the Conservancy has concentrated much of its work in Chile on private lands conservation. Success has been achieved by creating forest corridors, supporting the formation of conservation networks linking public and private protected areas, and by working to promote incentives that encourage local landowners to preserve the natural habitat on their properties.
Over the past ten years, the Conservancy has focused its efforts on protecting the temperate rainforests of southern Chile's Valdivian Coastal Range. For years, these rare rainforests were being unsustainably harvested while eucaliptus trees were being planted in their place, leaving no habitat for native plants or animals. To preserve a significant portion of this second-largest temperate rainforest in the world, the Conservancy began work to create the Valdivian Coastal Reserve in 2003: a nearly 150,000-acre preserve hailed by the Chilean government as "one of the most interesting conservation projects undertaken by a private organization."
The Conservancy also successfully supported the protection of native habitat in the Andes of central Chile by implementing innovative conservation strategies in the Nevados de Chillán Biological Corridor.
Now the Conservancy is bringing decades of conservation know-how to Chile's oceans and coasts, where unsustainable fishing practices threaten fragile marine and coastal habitats home to Humboldt penguins, whales, and seabirds that depend on the cold waters of the Humboldt Current for survival.
The Conservancy has also initiated conservation projects along Chile's central coast at the heart of the country's booming agricultural engine. One of the world's major producers of wine, olive oil, avocados and fruit, Chile's Mediterranean habitat is 90 percent privately owned, and native vegetation survives only in increasingly isolated fragments. The Conservancy is supporting the development of financial incentives to encourage private landowners to protect natural areas on their properties.
Did you know?
- Nobel Prize-wining poet Pablo Neruda was right on the mark when describing his homeland as "the thin country." Measuring more than 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) on its Pacific coast and only 221 miles across at its widest point, Chile is deceptively large; it's almost twice the size of Montana.
- Chile's climate and habitats are a mirror image of western North America: desert in the north and rain forest in the south. A north to south trip through Chile is like traveling from Southern Baja California to southern Alaska.
- Chile is home to one of the world's five temperate rain forests, similar to those in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada.
