Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You know that feeling when you're standing somewhere so beautiful it takes your breath away?
Well, picture this. I'm perched on a rocky outcrop in Torres Alpine, fingers frozen around my coffee thermos, binoculars in the other hand, waiting for sunrise. I mean, I'm a conservation biologist and I've seen my fair share of stuff, stunning places. But this, this is different.
So the sky starts doing this thing where it turns from black to purple to the most intense pink orange you've ever seen in the park's massive granite towers. They're literally glowing. And right at that moment, a herd of wanakos, wild relatives of the llama, appeared in the distance. Like it's just another morning in Patagonia. I almost dropped my coffee.
The funny thing is I'd spent months studying this place. I had all these maps and scientific papers about Chile's root of parks of Patagonia, this incredible 1700 mile stretch of protected wilderness. But let me tell you, no amount of research prepares you for that moment when you're actually there, when you're watching a herd of wanakos emerge from the morning mist like ghosts.
Rafa is standing beside me, my host and guide, who became one of my favorite people during this whole journey. He's got his binoculars in hand searching for pumas and he just gives me this knowing look. Like, pretty spectacular, right?
And that's when it hit me. This isn't just about the jaw dropping landscapes or the incredible wildlife. It's about the people who pour their hearts into protecting these wild places.
I'm Brooke Mitchell and I can't wait to share this journey with you. For this season of Rewildology, we're going to explore Chale's route of parks of Patagonia together. Trust me, it's going to be quite a ride. We'll trek Pumas.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Puma is rupestre.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Hike through ancient forests.
Oh my gosh. I've seen photos of this tree. Meet some of the most passionate conservationists you'll ever encounter.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: It's not anymore like seeing an animal or the animal you're working with on a camera trap. But listen to the people and how they are pro on having a healthy ecosystem on their backyards.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: And hopefully by the end, you'll understand why these places matter so much to all of us. How exciting.
Watching the birth of a park.
Throughout this series, I hope to share not just the facts and figures that make this conservation corridor remarkable, but the feeling of standing in these places where wildness still reigns.
But before we almost fall over from Wind gusts and hop on bush flights. Let's start at the beginning with Patagonia itself.
This wild landscape I'm standing in has a story that stretches back millions of years to a time when the Andes Mountains were just beginning to rise from the earth.
When most people think of Chile, they might picture a long, skinny country on a map. But standing here amid the majestic peaks and windswept valleys of Patagonia, what I'm witnessing is far more breathtaking than any map could possibly convey.
Imagine taking all of Chile and laying it across North America. It would stretch from Mexico all the way up to Alaska. That's over 2,700 miles of the most diverse landscapes you could dream up. In the north, you've got the Atacama Desert, the driest non polar desert in the world. And as you move south, the landscape transforms like chapters in a book. From Mediterranean valleys dotted with vineyards, through temperate forests draped in mist, all the way down to the windswept peaks and glaciers of Patagonia, where I'm standing now.
To truly appreciate this region, we need to understand the remarkable forces that shape this landscape. The story begins about 200 million years ago, when South America was still pressed against Africa as part of the supercontinent Gondwana.
As these landmasses drifted apart, something dramatic happened. The Andes Mountains began to rise.
Picture two of Earth's tectonic plates colliding in slow motion. The Nazca plate, carrying part of the Pacific Ocean floor, started diving beneath South America. This massive collision forced the Earth's crust to crumple upward, creating the longest mountain chain in the world.
The Andes didn't just change the landscape, however, they transformed the entire climate of the continent.
These mountains act like a giant wall, catching storms rolling in from the Pacific.
When moisture laden clouds hit the Andes, they're forced upward and cooled, dropping their rain on the western slopes. This creates one of the most dramatic rainfall gradients on Earth. Standing in a temperate rainforest on the Chilean side, you might get drenched by 4,000 millimeters of rain annually. But just a few kilometers east, over in Argentina, the same latitude receives less than 3, 300 millimeters. It's like crossing from Ireland to the Sahara in the space of a day's hike.
This remarkable climate gradient creates extraordinary biodiversity throughout Patagonia. In the temperate rainforest, you'll find alerce trees that can live over 3,000 years. Some of the oldest living things in South America. The Gran Abuelo, or great grandfather, has been growing for possibly 5,5400 years. When this tree was a sapling the pyramids hadn't yet been built.
As you journey south, the landscape transforms into vast grasslands, or pampas, where guanacos, wild relatives of llamas, roam in herds hundreds strong. These grasslands support an intricate food web, including pumas, Andean condors with their 10 foot wingspans, and the endangered walmool deer. It's one of the last places on Earth where you can still see large herbivores and their predators interacting in their natural habitat.
Perhaps most dramatic are the glaciers, enormous rivers of ice that have been sculpting this landscape for millions of years.
The southern Patagonian ice field is the third largest expanse of continental ice outside the poles. Over 12,000 square kilometers in size. Beyond their breathtaking beauty, these glaciers serve as critical barometers of our changing climate, offering visible evidence of global environmental shifts.
Long before European explorers arrived, indigenous peoples like the Mapuche, Kalwaskar and Yagan developed profound relationships with these environments, understanding the interconnectedness that modern conservation efforts now strive to protect.
The Mapuche, whose name literally means people of the land, cultivated the forests of central Chile through sophisticated management practices. Their fundamental understanding of what they call ytrufio mongon, the interconnectedness of all living things, mirrors what modern ecologists are now only rediscovering.
In the maze of southern fjords, the Kawaskar people developed navigation expertise that would impress any modern meteorologist.
At the continent's southernmost tip, the Yagon adapted to survive conditions European sailors found unbearable.
These cultures didn't just survive in these landscapes, they actively shaped them, maintaining ecological balances that kept both human communities and natural systems healthy.
Walking through these parks today, you can still find traces of this relationship. Ancient shell middens along coastlines, traditional gathering spots tucked into forest clearings.
This living heritage teaches us that meaningful conservation extends beyond protecting untouched wilderness. It embraces and celebrates the enduring relationship between human communities and the lands they've stewarded for thousands of years.
The arrival of Spanish conquistadors in 1536 marked the beginning of a profound transformation.
Where indigenous peoples had seen interconnected living systems, the Europeans saw resources to extract. Ancient Alerce trees, some over 3,000 years old, were harvested for their rot resistant timber.
Vast tracts of native forest were cleared for agriculture and ranching.
What makes Chile's story unique in colonial South America is the Mapuche resistance. They successfully fought Spanish control for over 300 years, maintaining independence in their southern territories well into the 19th century.
This resistance inadvertently helped preserve many landscapes that are now part of the root of parks of Patagonia. The region's sheep. Sheer ruggedness, those same mountains and forests that make it so spectacular helped protect both its ecological and cultural diversity from complete transformation.
After gaining independence in 1818, Chile faced a crucial what kind of nation would it become?
For much of the 19th century, the drive for economic development won out. But. But by the early 20th century, Chileans began noticing the consequences of unchecked extraction. Those magnificent alerce trees were disappearing at an alarming rate. Pristine grasslands were slowly turning to desert from overgrazing.
This awakening led to Chile's first protected area in 1907, the Moyeko Forest Reserve. It was a small start, but it marked a crucial shift in how Chileans view their natural heritage.
The real game changer came in the 1990s when Douglas and Christine Tompkins arrived on the scene. The visionaries behind the root of parks of Patagonia More about their extraordinary story in a moment.
All of these incredible landscapes I've just described, the ancient forest, glacial valleys and windswept pampas. They are now part of something revolutionary in conservation. Chile's root of Parks of Patagonia Let me put this in perspective. We're talking about 2008 kilometers. That's about 1700 miles for my American friends of Connected wilderness, linking together 17 national parks with plans for an 18th park at Cape Forward.
But what makes this project truly special isn't just its size. It's its vision.
I chatted with Rafa, the founder of Birds Chile and my guide through much of this journey to understand what makes the route of parks of Patagonia different.
As we stood in front of a park sign in Pumalin National Park, Rafa explained something crucial about the project's philosophy.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: The route of the park of Patagonia is the route of 17 national parks. In the future will be 18 with Cabo Frower National Park, 60 communities 2008 km from north to south. And of course a group of national parks that are public or they are all public. Some of them were donated by Rewilding foundation and some others were basically parks that are already been there and administered by the state. There is a Chucao Tapaculo there today. We project the route of the park of Patagonia to be the most important.
I know, I think that the most important is not the correct word. We want to project it as one of the best example of travel as a consequence of conservation, basically. So we want that this area become a great destination for conservation, adventure travel, but always thinking about destination that need to have an activity, that need to have a positive impact, have involved the local communities.
And I need also to have certain parameters in order to manage it, manage the tourism industry or the tourists that will visit the place in a good way. You know, keeping in mind that national parks are first areas of conservation, and then as a consequence of that, we can have travel, not the other sides. National parks are not made for travel, are made for conservation. But we can do good travel in the national parks and project an economy based on sustainable travel.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: This idea that conservation comes first with tourism following naturally from protected wilderness flips the traditional development model on its head. The root of Parks of Patagonia wasn't created as a tourist destination that happens to protect some nature. Instead, it emerged from one of the most ambitious conservation projects in history.
It started when Douglas and Christine Tompkins came to Chile in the early 1990s.
Doug, who founded the North Face in Esprit, and Chris, the former CEO of Patagonia Incorporated, had a revolutionary idea. What if we could protect entire ecosystems, not just isolated patches? Using their business success, the Tompkins began purchasing vast tracts of land for conservation through their foundation, now known as Rewilding Chile, which was initially controversial. Imagine foreign conservationists acquiring massive areas of your country. It raised understandable concerns, but here's where the story takes its most fascinating turn.
Instead of keeping these lands private, the Tompkins formed a partnership with the Chilean government to create something unprecedented. They donated their lands back to Chile under one that they would become national parks, protected for generations to come.
This visionary act laid the groundwork for what would eventually become the root of parks of Patagonia.
The path to creating this root began gradually. The creation of Corcovado National park in 2005 and Yandagaya in 2013 laid the groundwork. Then, in 2014, the foundation formally presented the concept to the Chilean government to address concerns that conservation would remove land from productive use and hamper economic development.
As Doug Tompkins publicly stated when launching the vision at a 2015 summit, conservation isn't an expense, it's an investment.
The Root of Parks of Patagonia represents a comprehensive development strategy for Chilean Patagonia based on conservation, positioning national parks as engines for local communities.
The vision culminated in what has been called the largest land donation from a private entity to a country in history.
In 2017, Tompkins Conservation and the Chilean government signed an unprecedented agreement where the foundation would donate nearly a million acres of private land.
In exchange, the government would incorporate public lands and reclassify national reserves to create five new national parks and expand three others.
In January 2018, this dream became reality. When Chris Tompkins and the Chilean government signed the final decrees, the Tompkins foundation donated their private lands to Chile, and the government contributed an additional 2.4 million acres of public lands, while reclassifying 6.5 million acres of reserves. Out as national parks.
Combined with existing protected areas, they created something remarkable a continuous corridor of protected wilderness spanning one third of Chile.
As Ratha emphasized to me, the route transcends traditional wilderness protection. By actively engaging the 60 local communities along the route, the root of Parks of Patagonia moves beyond mere landscape preservation to pioneer a revolutionary conservation approach where ecological health and community prosperity develop hand in hand.
What many people don't realize is the global significance of this conservation corridor. After the Amazon Basin, it contains one of the highest rates of carbon storage in South America. According to recent studies, the 28 million acres protected by the root of parks of Patagonia store an astonishing 6.6 billion metric tons of carbon. That's almost three times more carbon per hectare than the forests of the Amazon. With peat bogs making up nearly 20% of the route's surface and storing 10 times more carbon than any other ecosystem. This isn't just a scenic drive. It's a crucial climate solution that benefits the entire planet.
The ecological value extends beyond carbon storage. The route encompasses wetlands, ice fields, and the most extensive fjord system on the planet. Its coastline, with its fjords, peninsulas, and over 3,000 islands, stretches more than 52,000 miles, equivalent to twice the circumference of Earth. The north and south ice fields within the route form the third largest reserve of freshwater in the world.
In future episodes, we'll explore a select collection of these parks in detail, meeting the people who protect them and discovering what makes each one unique. But for now, just imagine what it means to have the foresight to protect landscapes on this scale. Not just for wildlife, but for all of us.
As the park's visionaries put it. The Root of Parks of Patagonia shows how reconnecting with nature and developing models that work in harmony with biodiversity can promote healthy, vibrant environments for all communities of life on Earth.
The story of Patagonia unfolds as a remarkable transformation from the ancient geological drama of the rising Andes through millennia of indigenous stewardship, to today's groundbreaking root of parks of Patagonia. Beyond its captivating history and breathtaking vistas lies something even more extraordinary. A massive conservation corridor that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of of what becomes possible when we envision conservation at an ecosystem scale.
Standing here in Torres del Paine, watching the last Rays of sun paint those granite towers pink. I feel a profound optimism about conservation's future.
These protected lands represent far more than scenic viewpoints or postcard imagery. They safeguard complete living systems where every element remains connected, from the tiny Darwin's frog hiding in forest undergrowth to the majestic Andean condor soaring overhead on 10 foot wingspans.
Speaking of wild creatures, in our next episode, we're diving deep into one of Patagonia's most fascinating stories.
Join me as we hike through valleys and hidden forests of Torres del Paine national park, searching for sign of Patagonia's apex predator, the puma. We'll meet Nicolas Lagos, a remarkable conservationist who spent his career studying these mysterious cats and discover how protecting pumas creates a ripple effect that helps preserve entire ecosystems.
Until then, I'm Brooke Mitchell. See you on the Puma Trail.
I want to invite you to become part of something bigger than just this podcast.
This series is actually one pillar of a larger initiative called rewildology's Project Patagonia, where conservation truly meets adventure. Project Patagonia is built on three Listen, Experience and Protect. You're already participating in the first pillar by listening to this podcast series, but if you're inspired to go deeper, you can join us in the field for the second pillar experience.
In April 2026, I'll be leading a small group of just 10 people on an unforgettable expedition to trek Pumas and explore the majestic mountains of Torres de Paine National Park. This intimate adventure includes expert led Puma tracking meetings with conservation researchers, hiking through breathtaking landscapes and even kayaking to the magnificent Great Glacier. You'll literally follow in the footsteps of the stories you're hearing in this podcast.
The third pillar, protect, is where your passion can translate into direct conservation impact.
Through our partnership with Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, your support helps fund crucial work to protect pumas and their habitats throughout Patagonia.
Your donations help bridge divides between fragmented habitats, develop solutions for human wildlife conflict, implement wildlife corridors, and support cutting edge research.
Whether you choose to listen to this series, join our expedition, make a donation, or all three you become part of a community dedicated to preserving one of Earth's most spectacular regions.
To learn more about Project Patagonia and how you can get involved, visit rebotology.com Project Patagonia Together we can ensure that the root of parks of Patagonia continues to thrive for generations to come.
