Chile has officially created 5 new national parks and expanded three previous ones in a move that protects over 10 million acres of land!

When we want to protect certain ecosystem, species or just protect nature in general, creating a legal protection is very important, so I am a huge fan of making national parks and other areas where there are strict restrictions as to what you are allowed to do within the area. Not only does this give a signal that the government care for the nature in this area, but it also increases their ability to control it, and potentially remove illegal activities from it if it is needed.

A Patagonian landscape. Areas like this one is now protected on the Chilean side of the Patagonia! Image by Wikimedia Commons users Adroar, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Just a few days ago the Chilean government announced that they had created several national parks in regions with unique features, which is a huge win for conservationists who want us to take better care of the nature around us. It was only made possible because of a private conservation group that has been buying lands and cooperated with the government, which goes to show that even non-governmental organizations can make a big change in the world.

10 million acres of new national parks in Chile

Tompkins Conservation is a conservation group owned by Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, and they are what made this possible. During the last 25 years this couple has been buying lands in Chile in order to protect it, and after much hard work their efforts paid off. On Monday (January 29) Tompkins Conservation donated a total of 1 million acres of their land to the Chilean government. In additions to this, the government themselves had purchased another 9 million acres of land, giving them a total of 10 million fit for new protection!

This donation is the largest donation of land from a private company to the government ever donated, but as Kristine Tompkins said during the donation, it has not been easy. You can imagine how the local felt when two Americans came to South America to buy lands in order to prevent the locals from using it for grazing, farming and living. My professes always used to say that the most useful skill for a conservation biologist is the ability to negotiate and get people to agree, which is not far from the truth at all.

However, after 25 years of hard work it all paid off, and Chile now has five new national parks, as well as having expanded three of their older parks!

Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia (note that it is on the Argentinan parts of Pategonia). Image by I, Luca Galuzzi, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

The protected lands are in a region called the Patagonia, an area at the south base of the Andes mountains that is shared by Chile and Argentina. This region has a lot of interesting animal and plant life, as well as unique geological features, so it’s worth conserving! Some cool animals that you can find in this regions is the Chilean flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis), the guanaco (Lama guanicoe), the Patagonian fox (Lycalopex griseus) and the Patagonian hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus humboldtii), but there are also many more! A better list can be found on this Wikipedia page that lists a lot of the animal species in this region.

A guanaco; the non-domesticated version of llama is found in this region! Image by Flickr user xxxx, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

How much exactly is 10 million acres?

The total area of the new national parks and the three expanded parks is even bigger than the entire country Switzerland, which is far from the biggest country in the world, but it still goes a long way to show how much nature we are actually talking about. 10 million acres is roughly 40,468 square kilometers, while the total area of Switzerland is just a little bit higher with its 41,285 km²!

This short YouTube video is from the donation ceremony, but also shows a breathtaking view of some of the areas that have now been protected!

By the way, this is not the first time Chile has spent a lot of money on protecting animals and nature! If you click on that link you can see that the Chilean government preferred to save the breeding grounds of Humboldt Penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) instead of being able to mine 12 million tonnes of iron and 150,000 tonnes of copper, which is worth a lot of money.

National parks are not perfect

It’s important to keep in mind that national parks are far from perfect, but they are still one of the most important tools the conservation biologists have. Even protected areas do often get affected by logging or illegal hunting – which shows that the government needs to also provide money for someone to physically protect the areas as well. While this is a bigger issue in some countries than others, I do assume that Chile are pretty good at protecting their protected areas since they have shown themselves to be a leading country for conservation biology, but I’ll be honest and say that I’m not that familiar with Chile as a country, so it’s difficult for me to draw any conclusions about this.

National parks are not all that restricted, and visitors will be able to visit the parks. However, there are big limitations to how the areas can be used in terms of farming, grazing, building and logging, so any use of the land must not be exploited.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading about the huge national parks that has just been created in Chile. I believe this is very good news for the species and ecosystems found in this place, and hopefully more governments will follow their footsteps and protect their own ecosystems. If you want to read more, then check out the press release by Tompkins Conservation – because nothing beats the original source. However, you can also read more about it on National Geographic, The Guardian, or probably any other major news outlet. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading the good news!

Make sure to follow @valth for more posts like this!