Patagonia

Patagonia National Park was created in 2018 in the Aysén region and protects some 3,045 km² around the Chacabuco valley, in the transition between Andean forest and Patagonian steppe. Its creation is one of the most singular conservation stories on the continent.

The core of the park is the former Estancia Valle Chacabuco, a very large sheep ranch that the organisation Tompkins Conservation, founded by Douglas Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt, bought in 2004 in order to restore it ecologically: hundreds of kilometres of fencing were removed, the livestock was taken off and the grassland and its native herbivores were allowed to recover. In 2018 the organisation donated the land to the Chilean state, which joined it to the Jeinimeni and Tamango national reserves to constitute the park, as part of the largest donation of private land to a state recorded up to then and of the creation of the Patagonia Park Network.

The park is today one of the best places to watch Patagonian wildlife: guanacos in large herds, puma at an exceptional density and very used to human presence, Darwin's rhea and, above all, huemul, the deer endemic to the southern Andes that appears on the coat of arms of Chile and of which little more than a thousand animals remain. Recovering its populations is the main management objective.