La Campana

La Campana National Park was created in 1967 in the Valparaíso region, in the coastal range, and protects some 80 km². Its name comes from Cerro La Campana, at 1,880 metres, which Charles Darwin climbed in August 1834 during the voyage of the Beagle; the naturalist recorded the view from the summit in his diary, and a plaque at the top commemorates the ascent.

The park preserves the world's largest grove of Chilean wine palm (Jubaea chilensis), the palm with the thickest trunk on the planet and a threatened species whose range has shrunk drastically through the historic exploitation of its sap to make palm honey, a process that required felling the whole tree. Alongside the palm grove grow sclerophyllous forest of peumo, boldo and quillay, oak woods of Nothofagus macrocarpa at higher altitudes, and scrub.

It is one of the most representative enclaves of the sclerophyllous forest of central Chile, a Mediterranean-type ecosystem recognised as a biodiversity hotspot and among the country's most threatened by agricultural and urban expansion. In 1984 UNESCO designated the La Campana-Peñuelas Biosphere Reserve, made up of this park and the Lago Peñuelas National Reserve, with 17,095 hectares; the lake supplies water to Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, which makes conserving the area a matter of urban supply as well.