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Conservation and National Parks in Chile
by Tim Burford

June/Junio 2001

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Conservation has a long history in Chile.

The araucaria (monkey-puzzle tree) has been protected since the 18th century, originally in order to ensure a supply of timber for the Spanish navy. Nevertheless, other trees have been mercilessly logged and burnt. The last scented sandalo tree (on Juan Fernandez) had been felled by 1908.

The first forestry reserve was created at Villarrica in 1912, and the Vicente Perez Rosales National Park was created in 1926. The national park system is to this day part of Conaf, the National Forestry Corporation, which produces some distortions -- there is no forestry north of Santiago, after all, but there are eight national parks.

Due in part to the boom in tourism (60 percent of foreign tourists visit a national park) and in part to a growth in environmentalist pressure domestically, there are now moves towards the creation of a dedicated parks service. The ecologists of Deproden, the Natural Resource Protection Department of the Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG), are based at Bulnes 140 in Santiago, close to Conaf's new Unidad de Gestion de Patrimonio Silvestre, and they are working more closely together.

Protected Areas

The country's various types of protected area are classified within the National System of State-Protected Wilderness Areas (SNASPE), and includes 33 national parks, 47 forestry reserves, and 13 natural monuments, a total of over 14.3 million hectares, 19 percent of the area of continental Chile (ie: excluding Antarctica). In 1980 there were in fact 51 national parks and 52 reserves. Since then ten national parks and 20 reserves have been abandoned and eight national parks reclassified as natural monuments; but the area of national parks has increased by 22 percent to 8.38 million hectares, and the area of forestry reserves has decreased by 23 percent to 5.47 million hectares.

More to the point, there's a better spread of protected ecosystems, but even so, 83.6 percent of protected land is in the 11th and 12th regions, where no-one else particularly wants the land. Over half of Chile's evergreen forest is protected, but only 0.9 percent of Chile's desert (170,237 hectares), and 0.6 percent of its sclerophyllous (drought-resistant) scrub and woodland.

In 1984, of 85 ecosystems in Chile, 28 were not included in SNASPE (and nor were seven of Chile's 11 endangered species of tree). This led to the creation between 1993 and 1996 of new national parks protecting such specific ecosystems as desierto montano de la cordillera de Domeyco (montane desert of the Domeyko range, in Llullaillaco), estepa arbustiva de la pre-puna (shrubby pre-puna steppe, in Licancabur), estepa desertica de los salares andinos (desert steppe of the Andean saltpans, in Nevado de Tres Cruces), and desierto costero de Huasco (Huasco coastal desert, in Llanos de Challe), and also of ten new reserves. In the south the only gap is now bosque patagonico de coniferas (Patagonian forest with conifers, around Futaleufu).

These are, of course, welcome developments, but totally inadequate as long as they remain so woefully underfunded. Of Conaf's total budget of about $40 million, just $2.1 million is designated for national parks. The immense Laguna San Rafael National Park (1.7 million hectares) has just two rangers, and others are equally understaffed, with just 375 actual staff against a need for 533. Thus when Conaf bosses talk grandly of a 'minimum impact policy', what they mean is that they are unable to keep paths open beyond those to the most obvious and popular lakes and waterfalls. One response to this is the policy of contracting services such as kiosks, campsites and boat-hire to outside concessions, which both frees Conaf staff and brings in revenue ($117,000 in 1992, compared to $460,000 in entry fees, and far more by now)

Conaf is becoming more decentralised, with parks being allowed to manage their own concessions and keep more of their own revenue. Unfortunately, this currently means bad managers are given more power, but there will no doubt be a shakeout before long. Entrance fees already vary considerably, but are generally reasonable. What is unfair to mochileros (lone backpackers) is the Chilean habit of charging by the site or carload for camping. Given that some of the back-country trails are increasingly overgrown and blocked by fallen branches and trees, you may even prefer to find areas outside the national park system where roads are half built (such as the Exploradores and San Lorenzo areas in Aysen) and explore them before they get developed.

Conaf established an ecotourism unit in 1996 (defining it as (sic) 'the search contact with natural environments little altered by man, respecting what is indigenous to and representative of the country'), but it still seems to be thinking largely in terms of business concessions. It remains to be seen how this develops.

A few private reserves are appearing outside the SNASPE system: these include the Pumalin Park, Cañi, Alto Huemul, Seno Otway and Yendegaia. Another is planned at Palos Quemados, west of the Cuesta El Melon (on the PanAmerican north from Santiago towards La Ligua). A new legal category, Santuario de la Naturaleza, has been devised for these private reserves. In addition, the government has granted its first conservation concession, for the management of part of Isla Magdalena, north of Puerto Aysen (not the Isla Magdalena penguin reserve off Punta Arenas), to Doug Tompkins of Pumalin. CODEFF is also managing part of the Rio Simpson reserve as a huemul sanctuary. Chile's first marine parks are now being created off Chiloe and Isla Choros. Conama is leading the Sendero de Chile project, for a high-quality trail (for cyclists and horses as well as hikers) from Visviri (on the Bolivian border) to Tierra del Fuego, along the precordillera. The pilot stretch opened in 2001 in the Conguillio National Park. Thankfully, the many minefields along the borders are being cleared anyway.

Forestry

Forestry is booming in southern Chile, another aspect of the country's highly 'successful' exploitation of its natural resources (in 1998 the WWF ranked Chile third worst in the world for depredation of natural resources). There are two aspects to this, on the one hand the logging of native forest and on the other the spread of plantations of exotic species. Perhaps 15m hectares, a third of the original area of native forest, had been lost by 1955; another 700,000 hectares was lost in 1984-94.

A survey in 1998 put the total of native forest at just over 13.4 million hectares (17.8 percent of the national area, and 76.5 percent of the total forested area) rather than the previous assumption of 8.47 million hectares; 70 percent of this is in the 10th and 11th regions. In 1997 Codeff claimed that 120,000 hectares of native woodland is being lost every year, and it's clear that the rate is accelerating, perhaps doubling in the last decade. This is almost entirely due to the boom in the export of astillas (woodchips), largely to Japan, for the production of computer paper. This is highly controversial because Chile is the only country in the world to make its lowest-value product from its highest-quality wood, rather than as a by-product. Woodchip exports were 76,000m3 in 1986, all from pine plantations, but rose to 2.5m m3 in 1995, worth $136.3 million, and 62 percent of it from native forest. Production rose but the price fell so that in 1999 woodchips accounted for $135m of a total $2bn forestry exports. In that year tourism brought in just over $1bn, a rather specious comparison that leads some to assume that forest tourism could replace logging. Certainly Chile should export only value-added products from its native forest.

Plantations of exotic species cover 2.2 million hectares, which is set to double in the next 20 years, thanks to generous subsidies. Currently at least 60,000 hectares is planted per year, about half of the area cleared. About 90 percent of this is Monterrey pine (pino insigne/Pinus radiata), which was introduced in the 1880s and grows faster here than anywhere else (in the Lakes it's ready for harvesting in 15 years), and covers a far greater area than in its native California.

There's also eucalyptus (8 percent), which is suited to the drier land to the north of Araucania, and Oregon pine, which can cope with snow, to the south, and Conaf is now planning to plant large areas of poplars further to the north. This is the truly productive sector of the industry. Forestry produces 3 percent of Chile's GDP and 2 percent of employment (0.1 percent in native forestry). Forest products are Chile's third most valuable export (11.8 percent of total exports), increasing by 22 percent each year over the last decade, and expected to increase from $2bn in 1999 to $3bn in 2010.

This area is home to many Mapuche, whose villages have become islands in exotic forest of pine which acidifies and dries the land (and seems to absorb less CO2 than native forest). This is the poorest area in Chile, with 36 percent living in poverty. Not surprisingly there is increasing activism for indigenous land rights, fuelled not just by plantation forestry but also by dam-building on the Biobio.

Rio Condor

The greatest recent controversy was the Rio Condor project of the U.S.-based Trillium Corporation to log subantarctic woodland for woodchips. (See http://www.chiper.cl for details) They own 300,000 hectares in southern Tierra del Fuego, most in Chile, of which they intend to log 103,000 hectares, supposedly 'in order to protect' the rest better. This was opposed by an alliance of pressure groups, who succeeded in having the project's initial authorisation by CONAMA (National Environment Commission) declared illegal. This was taken to the Supreme Court and eventually approved by the Lagos government (though a similar plan in Chiloe was rejected). Trillium had appointed a Scientific Committee including most of Chile's leading biologists (Mary Kalin Arroyo, Claudio Donoso, Edmundo Pisano), who not surprisingly reported against the project; Dr Jerry Franklin, one of the most respected US forestry ecologists, was appointed fideicomisario (a sort of environmental ombudsman), and has persuaded Trillium to reduce the annual cut, produce more lumber rather than astillas, and bought the disused Magallanica de Bosques mill, in Bahia Catalina, near Punta Arenas. Unfortunately they damaged a listed conchal (indigenous shell-pile, up to 5,000 years old) building an access road, which created quite a fuss. Trillium is also talking of ecotourism in the areas opened up by them, though any true ecologist will wish the roads had never been built. Now it's been revealed that the Chilean state sold the land to Trillium for just five dollars a hectare, less than half the fair price; Trillium agreed to pay the balance as a "donation" to the town of Puerto Porvenir, which has not been paid.

However an even more disastrous forest project has now appeared -- the Cascada Chile scheme, which will devastate the Lakes District. Half-owned by Boise Cascade (already notorious in the United States), it proposes the world's largest woodchip mill at Ilque, on the coast near Puerto Montt. Rather than buying forest, it will rely on private land-owners to supply it with wood, to produce 700,000m3 pa of oriented-strand board, for home-building in the United States. The Camino Costero Sur, about 200km of new road from Corral to Maullin, is bound to lead to logging anyway, and is controversial due to the government undertaking Environmental Impact Assessments only for the short stretches through protected areas.

There's further controversy over the effects of planned cellulose plants in the Valdivia area, due to the effects of toxic effluents on fishing and tourism. Forest fires are a problem, increasing three-fold between 1994 and 1998 to an average 23,000 hectares per year, mostly in the pine plantations of Arauco province, where Mapuche land-rights activists are blamed. Some of it is still due to arson by forest owners who would rather sell fire-damaged alerce wood than have protected trees growing on their land. Desertification, partly due to deforestation, has become a major environmental problem, affecting 40m hectares (66 percent of area), of which 33m are highly eroded.

Green Politics

Pinochet's constitution guarantees the right to a clean environment, but the free-market ethos of the government and business has meant that this has been ignored. The mining industry has been one of the worst offenders. Copper smelters produce 12 times as much sulphur dioxide pollution as in the US. Codelco are to spend $360m over five years on environmental measures at Chuquicamata and El Teniente. Everyone living at Chuqui' is to be moved to Calama by 2002, and the mine itself is to close in about 20 years. In Arica there's a lot of lead and arsenic contamination, and 20 percent of children are affected by lead poisoning. There's also massive use of pesticides (12,000t/yr), producing birth defects in seasonal workers and very high levels of DDT (2,788ppb) and lindane (773ppb) in fish in the Biobio. There's a growing rubbish-disposal problem, with Santiago producing 6,000 tonnes a day (over 1kg per head); even Antarctica produces 127 tonnes a year.

One of the world's leading environmental economists is Manfred Max-Neef, who stood as presidential candidate in 1993 for the green political grouping Gente en Movimiento and took 400,000 votes, 7 percent of the total. It can't be said that there's mass support for green politics (there's not even much interest in recycling), but public awareness is growing (in one poll 89 percent of those asked said environmental issues should be tackled), and Max-Neef has now been appointed senator, and chancellor of Valdivia's Universidad Austral.

The founder of Defensores del Bosque Chileno, Adriana Hoffman, was recognised in 1999 as one of the world's 25 leading protectors of the ecosystem. She's pretty high-profile, writing a weekly column in El Mercurio de Santiago until Lagos put her in charge of Conama, equivalent to Minister for the Environment. Development is still the priority in Chile, but there are signs that a more sustainable approach may now be followed.

 

This article is adapted from the author's new guidebook to Chile. Tim Burford is a Britsh/Canadian guidebook-writer and leader of hiking groups, in Eastern Europe (from Slovakia and Romania as far as Georgia!) and in Latin America. He can be reached via email: twburford@yahoo.co.uk

 

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