Patagonia National Park (Spanish: Parque Patagonia) is a National Park in the Aysén Region of Chile, once a private nature reserve operated as a public-access park, it was donated to the government of Chile by Tompkins Conservation in 2018. The heart of the park is the Chacabuco Valley, a biologically important east–west valley that forms a pass over the Andes Mountains and a transition zone between the Patagonian steppe grasslands of Argentinian Patagonia and the southern beech forests of Chilean Patagonia to the west. It is located between the General Carrera Lake to the north and

Cochrane Lake Cochrane may refer to: Places Australia *Cochrane railway station, Sydney, a railway station on the closed Ropes Creek railway line Canada * Cochrane, Alberta * Cochrane Lake, Alberta * Cochrane District, Ontario ** Cochrane, Ontario, a town wit ...

to the south, and extends to the Argentinian border to the east. The park has an infrastructure of trails, campgrounds, and a visitor center. Parque Patagonia was created by Conservacion Patagonica, a nonprofit incorporated in California and founded in 2000 by

Kris Tompkins Kristine McDivitt Tompkins (born in 1950) is the president and co-founder oTompkins Conservation an American conservationist, former CEO of Patagonia, Inc.,Michelle Bachelet and

Kris Tompkins Kristine McDivitt Tompkins (born in 1950) is the president and co-founder oTompkins Conservation an American conservationist, former CEO of Patagonia, Inc.,Lago Jeinimeni National Reserve,

Lago Cochrane National Reserve Patagonia National Park (Spanish: Parque Patagonia) is a National Park in the Aysén Region of Chile, once a private nature reserve operated as a public-access park, it was donated to the government of Chile by Tompkins Conservation in 2018. ...

, and other additional lands to create Patagonia National Park, with a combined area of .

History & Creation of Patagonia National Park

The Patagonia National Park Project consists of four major program areas: buying land, restoring biodiversity, building public access, and engaging communities.

Buying Land

Originally one of the region's largest sheep ranches, Estancia Valle Chacabuco changed hands many times over the past century. British explorer Lucas Bridges established the area as ranchland in 1908, but through the efforts of the Eduardo Frei Montalva administration to redistribute wealth, the land was expropriated and divided between several local families in 1964. The land was reclaimed once again, this time by the Augusto Pinochet administration, and then sold to Belgian landowner Francoise de Smet in 1980. Kris and Doug Tompkins first visited the Chacabuco Valley in 1995. CONAF (Chile's National Forest Corporation) had listed the Chacabuco Valley as a top conservation priority for over 30 years, due to its unique array of native ecosystems. After two decades of declining profits, in 2004, Conservacion Patagonica (now called Tompkins Conservation) purchased the Estancia Valle Chacabuco from de Smet and began purchasing smaller holdings from willing sellers in the Chacabuco Valley, with the goal of creating a continuous reserve to meet the edges of the nearby Jeinimeni and

Tamango ''Tamango'' is a 1958 France, French/Italy, Italian film directed by John Berry (film director), John Berry, a Hollywood Blacklist, blacklisted United States, American director who exiled himself to Europe. The film stars Dorothy Dandridge, Curd ...

National Reserves.

Restoring Biodiversity

The Chacabuco Valley, heart of Patagonia National Park, was for generations a vast sheep and cattle ranch, with almost 25,000 animals being raised on the land in a single year. The native grasslands were degraded by years of intense livestock grazing, leading to patchy desertification of the soils, and to the decline of wildlife populations that are native to the grasslands. With the purchase of the Estancia in 2004, Conservación Patagónica (CP) began working to remove fencing and reseed former pastures with native grasses, opening up the land to the return of native species such as the guanaco, and the endangered huemul deer. Recovery of the huemul is a top priority for the organization, which is conducting projects to monitor and protect the park's population of 100-200 animals, one of the largest known surviving populations on earth. * Ecosystem Restoration: Patagonia has suffered its share of ecological abuse: intensive sheep ranching on sandy, arid soils has resulted in widespread

desertification Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by ...

. In the transition from sheep ranch to national park, Conservación Patagónica aimed to reverse these damages, restore productive habitat, and create a model of ecosystem restoration for Patagonia. The grasslands recovery program, launched in 2004, began with removing almost all livestock. Conservación Patagónica's volunteer program performed the bulk of the work of ecosystem restoration. As of 2011, they removed over half of the 640 kilometres (400 mi) of habitat-fragmenting ranch fencing. Volunteers also collected seeds from native coiron grasses, which professional ecosystem restoration workers used to reseed heavily damaged areas. * Wildlife Recovery: HuemulDeer

Conservación Patagónica's large-scale ecosystem restoration work, now carried out b
Rewilding Chile
serves as the foundation for targeted species-specific programs, such as the effort to monitor and protect the endangered and emblematic huemul deer. As wildness returns to this vast area, the populations of keystone species are finding a new equilibrium. With livestock gone, grasslands are producing more and better quality food for a range of herbivores, which have access to prime habitat and can roam freely without fences. Wildlife recovery programs take this ecosystem-level transition as the jumping-off point for initiatives to protect keystone species. The huemul deer represents the top priority for the Patagonia National Park project: habitat loss, disease transmitted from livestock, hunting, and predation by domestic dogs have diminished its population to 1,500 individuals left on Earth. Tracking pumas with GPS collars uncovers new information about their predation patterns, home ranges, and movements—critical data given their proximity to the huemul deer population. Simultaneously, Conservación Patagónica implemented strategies, such as livestock guardian dogs, to mitigate predator-livestock conflicts.

Building Public Access

Linde Waidhofer Patagonia National Park Visitor Center

One of CP's major focuses at the Patagonia National Park project was constructing durable, accessible public access infrastructure in order to provide visitors with a comfortable, engaging experience at the park. They built a park headquarters to include overnight accommodations, a restaurant, and a museum and visitor center. Architecture serves as a tool for social change: the aesthetic quality of park infrastructure conveys the cultural value of nature. Historic Patagonian buildings provide visitors with a vernacular architectural vocabulary tied to the region's history. These durable, solid, well-insulated buildings will require minimal upkeep and use local materials whenever possible: stone quarried on site and recycled wood. In addition, an innovative renewable energy system, composed of solar, wind, and mini-hydro generation facilities, make the park the world's first energy-independent park and minimize its carbon footprint.They also constructed trails and campgrounds to allow visitors to access the wilderness areas of the park, and to reach the neighboring reserves. By providing recreational opportunities, the park bolstered eco-tourism in the region, supports local businesses and communities while inspiring a deeper respect for nature in park visitors.

Engaging Communities

From the start of the project, CP began developing collaborations with neighboring communities in order expand local visits to the park, to include area residents in employment opportunities, and to facilitate the development of a successful eco-tourism economy to the region as the park grows. Through engaging children and other members of the local community, the park will inspire awareness and dedication to conservation. Conservación Patagónica offered jobs to all former gauchos and developed programs to retrain them as park rangers and conservation workers. A school outreach program brings local children into the park to learn about endangered species such as the huemul deer, and the potential community benefits of conservation. Conservación Patagónica hosts an annual Huemul Festival and hike. Huemul scholarships have allowed more than fifty students to continue their studies.

Ecology

Located in the transition zone between the arid steppe of Argentine Patagonia and the temperate southern beech forests of Chilean Patagonia, Parque Patagonia encompasses an array of ecosystems including grassland, riparian forest, and

wetlands A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

. The dry steppe grasslands of Argentine Patagonia are characterized by minimal rainfall, cold, dry winds, and sandy soil. The

Andean Mountains The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S l ...

block moisture from flowing west, creating this arid area region. A number of plants have been able to adapt to this harsh environment, including shrubs like calafate, quilembay and yaoyín, and tuft grasses like flechilla and coirón poa. These grasslands support hardy animals such as the burrowing owl, the gray fox, tuco-tuco, mara,

armadillo Armadillos (meaning "little armored ones" in Spanish) are New World placental mammals in the order Cingulata. The Chlamyphoridae and Dasypodidae are the only surviving families in the order, which is part of the superorder Xenarthra, along wi ...

s, various eagle and hawk species, and keystone predators like the puma. A wide range of animals thrive in the more habitable outskirts of the desert and around ephemeral lakes formed from the Andes' runoff, where trees and more nutritious aqueous grasses can grow. Moving west and climbing the vertical gradient of the Andes Mountains, the park's flora and fauna changes notably. The landscape begins to transform into forests, which consists mostly of three species of the southern beech ( Nothofagus) genus: lenga, ñire, and coiue. Here, rainfall can be very high, generating dense forests, full of nutrients from high leaf litter. These forests host 370 vascular plant genera, which are vital to the survival of the surrounding fauna. Some significant mammals include the endangered huemul deer,

puma Puma or PUMA may refer to: Animals * ''Puma'' (genus), a genus in the family Felidae ** Puma (species) or cougar, a large cat Businesses and organisations * Puma (brand), a multinational shoe and sportswear company * Puma Energy, a mid- and d ...

red fox The red fox (''Vulpes vulpes'') is the largest of the true foxes and one of the most widely distributed members of the Order (biology), order Carnivora, being present across the entire Northern Hemisphere including most of North America, Europe ...

, and various species of bats. The forests of Parque Patagonia also contain a high diversity of bird species including the Andean condor, Magellanic woodpecker, spectacled duck, black-necked swan, pygmy owl,

black-faced ibis The black-faced ibis (''Theristicus melanopis'') is a species of bird in the family Threskiornithidae. It is found in grassland and fields in southern and western South America. It has been included as a subspecies of the similar buff-necked ...

, Chilean flamingo,

Austral negrito The austral negrito or Patagonian negrito (''Lessonia rufa'') is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae. It breeds in Argentina and Chile, migrating north as far as Bolivia, southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. It is a vagrant to the Falkl ...

, Southern lapwing and a range of amphibians and reptiles. Guanaco Patagonico

Throughout Patagonia, the guanaco, a large camelid that is a wild relative of the llama, is the most abundant

herbivore A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpart ...

. It feeds on 75% of all plant species in the Patagonian steppe. The guanaco acts as a

keystone species A keystone species is a species which has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance, a concept introduced in 1969 by the zoologist Robert T. Paine. Keystone species play a critical role in maintaini ...

: it prevents domination of grass species, acts as a disperser and fertilizes, and has high reproductive rates, providing food for local carnivores, especially pumas. Although the park lies on the eastern side of the Andes, its glacier-fed streams and rivers run toward the Pacific Ocean. Their turquoise blue water is home to substantial populations of native fish such as perch ('' Percichthys trucha''), pejerrey patagonico (''

Odontesthes hatcheri ''Odontesthes'' is a genus of Neotropical silversides. They are found in fresh, brackish and salt water habitats in the southern half of South America (north to Brazil and Peru), as well as the offshore Juan Fernández and Falkland Islands. Addi ...

'') and puyen ('' Galaxias maculatus''). Atlantic salmon, as well as brook, brown, and rainbow trout, have been introduced to the area.

Visiting the Park

Parque Patagonia is open October through April and only accessible by car. It is south of Coyhaique, Chile and north of Cochrane, Chile. The closest airport is Balmaceda, Chile (BBA). A 300 km drive from Balmaceda on the Carretera Austral is necessary to reach the park. As of March 2018, the Carretera Austral is only paved between Balmaceda and Cerro Castillo, Chile. The remaining portion of the highway to the park is unpaved. The ranger station in Sector Jeinimeni is easily reachable by car in about 1.5 hours from the town of Chile Chico. It is a 2 to 5 day hike along the Aviles Trail to the Lodge at Valle Chacabuco. The Lodge at Valle Chacabuco, at the center of the park, houses the park's main tourist infrastructure, including a lodge, restaurant, visitor center and employee housing. There are also three campgrounds in the park."First Tracks in Chile's New Patagonia Park". Tomás Dinges. Backpacker. November 11, 2014

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Patagonia National Park in the Media

Our Great National Parks ''Our Great National Parks'' is a five-part Netflix documentary series about some of the world's national parks and their wildlife. It is presented by former president of the United States Barack Obama and was released on April 13, 2022. Cast * B ...

, a Netflix documentary series narrated by Barack Obama, showcased this park in its second episode "Chilean Patagonia".

References

External links

Patagonia Park Official Website Detailed for the Aviles Trail
{{DEFAULTSORT:Patagonia Park Protected areas of Chile Magellanic subpolar forests 2018 establishments in Chile Protected areas established in 2018