Advances in protection of rarest most threatened landscapes in Chile

Last year, Tierra Austral and the owners of the Parque La Giganta property joined together to permanently protect 228 hectares of beautiful landscape by entering into a Derecho Real de Conservación agreement.  La Giganta is located in the Panquehue commune, near San Felipe, comprising the Mediterranean habitat that is Tierra Austral’s highest ecological priority.

Chile-Mediterranean landscapes like La Giganta are the rarest, most threatened and least protected in the country, a global biodiversity hotspot that provide refuge for a high number of plants and animals that are unique to this area.   The owners of La Giganta are passionately committed to conservation, and also to demonstrating that land conservation and income-producing sustainable land uses are entirely compatible. They have established a commercial cactus and succulent plant business on the property, which is integrated into the protected Mediterranean habitat. Now, the landowners are creating a park at La Giganta, which will be opened soon to the local community. To assist with the creation of the park, the Tierra Austral team recently visited La Giganta, to support sustainable visitation, including trail improvements and signage. This progress is being made possible by seed capital administered by Tierra Austral through its Boldo-Cantillana Project Chile-Mediterranean land conservation initiative, which is funded by a grant from the BHP Foundation.  BHP Foundation’s Environmental Resilience Program was developed to drive new ways of conserving and sustainably managing natural environments for the benefit of future generations. We do this by investing in large-scale projects which aim to improve how the environment is valued, enhance conservation planning, and share learnings with others.

The Boldo to Cantilana Project is advancing the protection of a 930,000-hectare landscape corridor, located in Chile’s Central Valley, extending from the capital city of Santiago to the resort city of Zapallar on the Pacific coast, with the goal of creating critical habitat linkages between the Coastal Range to the Andes Mountains. The Project is contributing to Chile’s national goal of protecting approximately 30 per cent of its ecosystems by 2030.