Protecting Unique Wilderness at the Bottom of the World
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. At the southernmost tip of South America, a place called Cape Forward, Chile is poised to create its 47th national park. Protection of this breathtaking landscape has been possible thanks to the efforts of a U.S. conservationist and her organization.

John Bartlett hiked through the wildlands that are going to become the park to see the area and to understand why it's worth protecting. At the end of the world, Patagonia's peaks and glaciers fracture into icy fuels, channels and inland. Beyond the glaciers and wild woodlands, Cape Frohwood in Chile is the forested headland at the very tip of the Brunswick Peninsula, the southernmost point on the South American continent. It's important for people to come and see that these places still exist.

Because a lot of people don't even understand how much of the earth is thriving but threatened. Conservationist Christine Tompkins has driven forward the creation of the future national park at Cape Frohwood. In March next year, 315,000 acres of the peninsula will become a new national park comprising carbon-storing peatlands, ancient woodland, underwater kelp forests and rugged shorelines.

Tompkins came to Chile for the first time in early 1993 with her husband, Douglas, who founded the outdoor clothing companies North Face and Esprit. And together, they have literally changed the Patagonian landscape. Rewilding Chile and rewilding Argentina, as well as their parent organisation, Tompkins Conservation, have created 15 national parks, including two marine parks.

This will be their 16th. Tragically, Douglas died in a kayaking accident in 2015. When Doug died, it was quite freeing in a way. It almost killed me. But now I have no fear. So taking things on, whether it's here in Chile or over in Argentina, seems like second nature to me now.

We made our way out here from the city of Punta Arenas. For three and a half hours, we bump over waves in the cabin of a small boat. The coastline is low and rugged, and as we plough on through the swells, fishing villages and huts stop appearing from behind headlands. Slowly, the sheer, snowy faces of mountains take their place, and tree branches reach northwards like desperate fingers, combed by the lashing wind and frozen by hail.

From here, we begin our walk. It's a truly diverse mosaic of life, from the sea to the peaks of the mountains. Benjamín Cáceres is Rewilding Chile's conservation coordinator for the region.

He grew up walking the area with his father, also a marine biologist. Starting with the sea, the most characteristic and iconic places are the kelp forests along the whole shoreline, a really special ecosystem which we have right from Alaska down to here. We camped between the white bark trunks of a koiway forest and set off along the beach the next morning, clambering over sharp rocks.

Algae shaped like mermaids' tails rise serenely with the current in the inlet we sidestep carefully around. A pod of dolphins leap and arc over the green plates of kelp just off the beach in front of us. We carry on slipping over the rocks and shellfish, edge along mossy ledges. The Darwin Range rises across the Strait of Magellan in front of us on the island of Tierra del Fuego.

While dinner is prepared, I sit down on a fallen tree trunk with Marcela Quiros, rewilding Chile's director of strategic partnerships. She explains where we are and where we've been as we squint down as a map in the fading light, tracing the islets of Patagonia which carry the unfamiliar names of explorers and mariners. Because the turba is Patagonia.

Marcela explains that nearly 20% of the area to be protected is peatland, which absorbs carbon and filters water. Some of the ancient forests reach right up to the shoreline where we look out to sea, imagining the galleons of Ferdinand Magellan and the other great explorers cutting through the waves, silhouetted against the setting sun.

Chile's first national park was created in 1926, and today the National Forestry Commission oversees 109 protected areas. Every president since then has created at least one national park, and Cape Throwood will be President Gabriel Boric's chance to protect a swathe of his home region, Magallanes. If you look at it, if we manage...

If you look, Quiroz says as she jabs the map excitedly with a forefinger, the Brunswick Peninsula where we are sat could be annexed into a great corridor of protected areas. The next day, we walk up and over the peatlands through gnarled thickets of dwarf cypress trees, their tiny green leaves glowing against the storm clouds as we squelch and suck our feet in and out of the mud. The University of Chile is currently conducting research into exactly how much carbon is held in these peatlands.

The area was once used for logging, with the coveted Coyhue timber taken away to build the city of Punta Arenas and even made it as far as the Falkland Islands in Buenos Aires. After trudging through the peatlands, we've just stepped down out of an ancient forest into this wide open bay where the waves are lapping at the shore and algae are floating on the surface. And right where we left the forest, there's a tiny archaeological site, a pile of shells and animal bones left behind by the indigenous Cahuasca people.

What we have here is a midden, an archaeological site which is evidence of more than 6,000 years of indigenous Cahuéscar activity in the area. Cáceres points to buried piles of shellfish and small bones left behind at Cahuéscar campsites.

Sometimes you'll even see penguin or dolphin bones among the debris. Efforts will be made to divert the paths in the new national park away from these extremely delicate archaeological sites. In some places, there are even the remains of fish traps the cauesca set up. These are rings of stone which are then filled with sea life at high tide, trapping the fish and shells when the waves fall away.

Four days after we had dropped off at the tip of the Americas, where the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic oceans meet, we've made it here to San Ysidro Lighthouse, which is going to form the entry point for the new national park. Just before the lighthouse at Bahia del Aguilar are the remains of a 19th century whaling station, evidence of the long human history on this windswept coastline.

The lighthouse will be turned into a museum by Cáceres, his brother, and a group of artists and scientists. He explains that this is one of eight lighthouses built along this coastline by Scottish architect George Slight to guide ships through the perilous Strait of Magellan. Nowadays, they are solar-powered and operated remotely by the Chilean Navy. I don't look back.

on what we've done so much over the last 30 years. What's important to me is what are we putting out in front of ourselves? Learning from what we've done and then go like hell and keep going. Christine Tompkins says that this, the 16th National Park her organisation has helped create, has been one of the most challenging, but also one of the most important. You know, when I die, all of this is going to keep going. There'll be a 19th and a 20th and a 21st and...

That's what matters to me. For NPR News, I'm John Bartlett at Sunny Cedro Lighthouse, Chile. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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