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Chile:
Forging the Tools for Conservation

Less than 1 percent of Chile’s Mediterranean region — a strip of land roughly 1,100 miles long that stretches from the north down into the central region of the country — has been protected. More than 90 percent of the land is privately owned. These facts alone suggested the Conservancy’s first strategy to preserve the country’s highly diverse Mediterranean habitats: working with a coalition of allies to create a Chilean version of conservation easements. The allies are also trying to establish new tax incentives for private landowners to protect natural areas on their properties.

Although about half of Chile’s population lives in the Mediterranean region, and the capital city of Santiago sits right in the middle of it, most people know little about the diversity of the arid land around them, says Francisco Solis, who directs the Conservancy’s work in the country. “‘Matorral,’ which is one name for this landscape, literally means degraded forest,” says Solis. “It’s a derogatory term.”

Yet Solis finds hope in an evolution now taking place.

“Years ago, conservation was focused only on tropical forests, and it took hard work to expand that focus to temperate forests,” says Solis. “Now we have a new challenge: to shift people’s attention again to include arid lands. Even if new legislation and incentives are created in Chile, we still need to reach out to landowners. Chile’s Mediterranean needs some good marketing.”

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Mediterranean Habitats: Lovely, Rare — and Endangered » 

Nature picture credits: Map © XNR Productions; Photo © Joel Sartore/National Geographic Image Collection (Guanacos); Photo © Tom Crowley (Chile)