SCOTT SIMON: Chile is posed to gain its 47th national park early next year when the southernmost tip at the South American continent is granted protected status. This initiative is in large part due to the efforts of U.S. conservationist Kristine Tompkins and her organization. John Bartlett has been hiking through the wilderness with Kristine Tompkins and her team.
(SOUNDBITE OF ICE CRACKING)
JOHN BARTLETT: At the end of the world, Patagonia's peaks and glaciers fracture into icy fiords, channels and inlets. Beyond the glaciers and wild woodlands, Cape Froward in Chile is the forested headland at the very tip of the Brunswick Peninsula, the southernmost point on the South American continent.
KRISTINE TOMPKINS: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: Conservationist Kristine Tompkins has driven forward the creation of the future national park at Cape Froward. 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: (Laughter).
BARTLETT: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: Rewilding Chile and Rewilding Argentina - as well as their parent organization, 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.
TOMPKINS: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: We made our way out here from the city of Punta Arenas.
TOMPKINS: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: For 3 1/2 hours, we bump over waves in the cabin of a small boat.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT ENGINE)
BARTLETT: The coastline is low and rugged, and as we plow 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
BARTLETT: From here, we begin our walk.
BENJAMIN CACERES: (Through interpreter) It's a truly diverse mosaic of life from the sea to the peaks of the mountains.
BARTLETT: Benjamin Caceres is Rewilding Chile's conservation coordinator for the region. He grew up walking the area with his father - also a marine biologist.
CACERES: (Through interpreter) 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUNNING WATER)
BARTLETT: We camp between the white-bark trunks of a coihue 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 inlets, we sidestep carefully around.
JAVIERA GOMEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: A pod of dolphins leap and arc over the green plates of kelp just off the beach in front of us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPLASHING WATER)
BARTLETT: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHOPPING)
BARTLETT: While dinner is prepared, I sit down on a fallen tree trunk with Marcela Quiroz, Rewilding Chile's director of strategic partnerships.
MARCELA QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: She explains where we are and where we've been as we squint down at a map in the fading light, tracing the islets of Patagonia, which carry the unfamiliar names of explorers and mariners.
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Marcela explains that nearly 20% of the area to be protected is peatland, which absorbs carbon and filters water.
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAMPFIRE CRACKLING)
BARTLETT: Chile's first national park was created in 1926. And today, the National Forestry Commission oversees 109 protected areas.
(CROSSTALK)
BARTLETT: Every president since then has created at least one national park. And Cape Froward will be President Gabriel Boric's chance to protect a swathe of his home region, Magallanes.
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: "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."
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
BARTLETT: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF CORMORANT CALL)
BARTLETT: The area was once used for logging, with the coveted coihue 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 Kawesqar people.
CACERES: (Through interpreter) What we have here is a midden - an archaeological site, which is evidence of more than 6,000 years of indigenous Kawesqar activity in the area.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHELLS CRUNCHING)
BARTLETT: Caceres points to buried piles of shellfish and small bones left behind at Kawesqar campsites. Sometimes, you'll even see penguin or dolphin bones among the debris. Efforts will be made to divert the pods in the new national park away from these extremely delicate archaeological sites.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: In some places, there are even the remains of fish traps the Kawesqar 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS SINGING)
BARTLETT: Four days after we were dropped off at the tip of the Americas, where the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic oceans meet, we've made it here to San Isidro lighthouse, which is going to form the entry point for the new national park.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS SINGING)
BARTLETT: Just before the lighthouse at Bahia del Aguila are the remains of a 19th-century whaling station, evidence of the long human history on this windswept coastline.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAMMERING)
BARTLETT: The lighthouse will be turned into a museum by Caceres, his brother and a group of artists and scientists.
CACERES: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
TOMPKINS: 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.
BARTLETT: Kristine Tompkins says that this 16th national park her organization has helped create has been one of the most challenging but also one of the most important.
TOMPKINS: 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.
BARTLETT: For NPR News, I'm John Bartlett at San Isidro lighthouse, Chile. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
