location: Chile

location: Chile

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Critics fear catastrophic energy crisis as AI is outsourced to Latin America
- AI use is surging astronomically around the globe, requiring vastly more energy to make AI-friendly semiconductor chips and causing a gigantic explosion in data center construction. So large and rapid is this expansion that Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has warned that AI is driving humanity toward a “catastrophic energy crisis.”
- Altman’s solution is an audacious plan to spend up to $7 trillion to produce energy from nuclear fusion. But even if this investment, the biggest in all of history, occurred, its impact wouldn’t be felt until mid-century, and do little to end the energy and water crises triggered by AI manufacture and use, while having huge mining and toxic waste impacts.
- Data centers are mushrooming worldwide to meet AI demand, but particularly in Latin America, seen as strategically located by Big Tech. One of the largest data center hubs is in Querétaro, a Mexican state with high risk of intensifying climate change-induced drought. Farmers are already protesting their risk of losing water access.
- As Latin American protests rise over the environmental and social harm done by AI, activists and academics are calling for a halt to government rubber-stamping of approvals for new data centers, for a full assessment of AI life-cycle impacts, and for new regulations to curb the growing social harm caused by AI.

For threatened Andean condors, garbage dump offers a buffet of risks & rewards
- In a 17-year study, Chilean researchers observed that Andean condors (Vultur gryphus) use landfills as supplemental food sources when natural food is scarce.
- The researchers found that females and juveniles lower in the pecking order are more likely to scavenge in landfills than older males.
- While this food subsidy could help Andean condors when times are tight, it may also put them at an increased risk of poisoning.

A highway project in Chile threatens one of the world’s longest-living tree species
- The Chilean government’s intention to build a final section of a highway through a national park has caused concern among scientists and environmentalists.
- In a letter published in the scientific journal Science, scientists warn that the road will destroy hundreds of the longest-living trees in the world.
- Scientists are also concerned that the road, which may allow large trucks, would impact numerous other endangered species in the park, including a rare canine and small wild cat.

New environmental rules for Chile’s protected areas rile the salmon industry
- A law that came into force in Chile last year has upset the salmon industry for imposing new requirements for salmon farms located in protected areas.
- The industry says the new rules threaten jobs and cause uncertainty in an industry that contributes 2% of Chile’s GDP.
- The salmon industry currently has 71 applications for concessions within protected areas, most of which wouldn’t meet the conditions laid out in the new rules.
- Conservation experts say the salmon industry’s reaction to this attempt at regulation is “unfortunate,” especially given its history of environmental harm.

Conservationists aim to save South America’s super tiny wild cat, the guina
- The Americas’ smallest wild cat, the guina (Leopardus guigna), is superbly adapted to its home range in Chile and Argentina. But the region is severely affected by deforestation and increasing human population, putting the cat’s future at risk.
- The increase in people in the guina’s habitat has particularly severe consequences, including roads, fences, fires, cattle and, especially, attacks by dogs. The cats are also hunted by people due to their reputation as chicken killers.
- Conservation experts and authorities agree that solutions to save the guina must include local people. They have turned their attention to the people living outside protected areas to help conserve one of South America’s most endangered cats.
- New, groundbreaking environmental legislation in Chile hopefully will also help the cause of the guina and other species impacted by deforestation.

Chile again rejects Constitution rewrite; experts say no big loss for environment
- On Dec. 17, 55% of Chilean voters rejected a proposal to reform the country’s Constitution, which dates back to the Augusto Pinochet regime; it was the second attempt, after a different proposal failed to get approval in September 2022.
- The latest proposed text, drafted mainly by conservatives, did not make significant progress on environmental and climate change topics, experts say.
- The 2022 draft included an entire chapter on the environment and made provisions on nature’s rights, while expanding protections against extractive industries. But concerns regarding the nationalization of water resources contributed to the “no” vote.

In Chile’s far south, scientists record an island’s quickly shifting ecology
- On Chile’s Navarino Island, home to South America’s southernmost city where some places share the same temperatures as Antarctica, a group of scientists is trying to understand how climate change is affecting subantarctic forests.
- The beautiful landscape, which is considered one of the most pristine on the planet and attracts travelers from around the world, has seen increased temperatures and decreased rainfall. Wetlands have dried up, ice floes have disappeared, populations of various animals have declined significantly and the life cycles of some insects have changed.
- The scientists working there want to communicate to the world that humans need to understand ourselves as one piece in a complex machine in which all living beings have an important and irreplaceable role in maintaining well-being.

The Cloud vs. drought: Water hog data centers threaten Latin America, critics say
- Droughts in Uruguay and Chile have led residents to question the wisdom of their governments allowing transnational internet technology companies to build water-hungry mega-data centers there.
- As servers process data, they need lot of water to keep them cool. But if demand grows as expected, the world will need 10-20 times more data centers by 2035, and they’ll be using far more water. Many will likely be built in economically and water-challenged nations already facing climate change-intensified droughts.
- Latin American communities fear that this “data colonialism” will consume water they desperately need for drinking and agriculture, and are critical of their governments for giving priority treatment to transnational tech giants like Google and Microsoft, while putting people’s access to a basic human necessity at risk.
- Surging digital data use by 2030 may cause each of us in the developed world to have a “digital doppelganger,” with our internet use consuming as much water as our physical bodies. But much of the stored data is “junk.” Critics urge that nations insist on tougher regulations for transnational companies, easing the crisis.

Chile government faces backlash after U-turn on copper mine
- In April 2023, Chile’s government approved the extension of Los Bronces, a major copper mine near the capital, Santiago, after having rejected it last year over environmental concerns.
- As part of the approved plan, Anglo American, the majority owner of Los Bronces, has committed to replacing 70,000 wood-burning stoves used in households across Santiago with electric burners — but critics say this is unrealistic.
- The mine extension project faces a backlash from environmental activists and local and regional authorities, who say they plan to take the matter to court.
- They cite potential impacts to air quality, as well as dust pollution that would darken glaciers in the region and speed up their melting, thus threatening a key water supply for Santiago residents.

In Chile, a wildlife rehab center deals with the aftermath of worsening fires
- Wildfires at the beginning of this year in Chile were some of the deadliest on record, destroying nearly 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of land and killing people and wildlife.
- At a wildlife rescue center in the city of Chillán, volunteer vets have been treating wildlife brought in with burns and other injuries, and releasing them back into their habitat wherever possible.
- But with much of the wildlife habitat severely damaged by the fires, the number of locations fit for wild rereleases is limited.
- Ecologists blame the intensifying fires on the combination of climate change, the spread of fire-prone eucalyptus and confer plantations, and deliberate burning.

Home to rare corals, a Chilean fjord declines in spite of protection
- The Comau Fjord, in the Chilean region of Patagonia, is one of the only sites in the world where the cold-water coral Desmophyllum dianthus lives just 5 meters (16 feet) below the sea surface.
- The easy access to these animals, which elsewhere live at extreme depths, motivated a group of scientists to study them.
- Their research brought new information to light about the corals’ biology and also revealed that the Comau Fjord is at serious risk.

Chilean chinchilla faces new threat from copper mine near national reserve
- Las Chinchillas National Reserve is the only place in the world dedicated to the protection of the Chilean chinchilla (Chinchilla lanigera), a species that was considered extinct at the beginning of the 20th century and remains endangered today.
- In 2002, the construction of a road divided the reserve, threatening the survival of these animals; as compensation, the Ministry of Public Works promised to expand the protected area, though this measure is yet to materialize and a new mining project is seeking to set up just 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the reserve.
- The Chilean chinchilla is not the only species affected; Las Chinchillas National Reserve is also home to foxes, opossums, Chilean iguanas, various cats and other species under some degree of threat.

National corridor project aims to save Chile’s endangered huemul deer
- Endemic to Chile and Argentina, the huemul deer (Hippocamelus bisulcus) is an endangered species, threatened by habitat loss, poaching, diseases and climate change.
- With only about 1,500 individuals still left in the wild, the huemul population has been reduced to only a small fraction (as little as 1%) of what it once was.
- In Chile, the National Huemul Corridor is a recently launched project that aims to save the species by reducing threats to its survival and restoring areas of its natural habitat.
- The species could act as a flagship for recovering the natural habitats for a range of other species, according to conservation organization Rewilding Chile.

Chile communities defy the desert by capturing increasingly scarce water
- The inhabitants of a rural community on the expanding frontier of Chile’s Atacama Desert are able to harvest around 500,000 liters (132,000 gallons) of water per year, thanks to fog nets installed 17 years ago.
- This water has allowed them to revive their mountain region’s vegetation and launch new businesses to improve their quality of life and adapt to drought.
- Other initiatives in the region, aimed at making the most use of the less frequent rains, help retain water for livestock and prevent soil erosion and mudslides.
- But these initiatives are pilot projects, with no funding or political support to sustain them over the long term, which the community says are what are needed the most.

For Argentina’s ruddy-headed goose, threats grow while population shrinks
- The ruddy-headed goose is on the brink of extinction, with just 700 birds left in southern Argentina and Chile, the result of hunting in the 20th century and habitat loss in the 21st.
- Every southern winter, these aquatic birds migrate more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) north, alongside the closely related ashy-headed and upland geese, from southern Patagonia to the province of Buenos Aires.
- A sanctuary in the species’ wintering area, a site specifically for the conservation of the species in the Argentine sector of the island of Tierra del Fuego, and a breeding center in Chile are among the conservation strategies being implemented to save the species.

New MPA Tic-Toc Golfo Corcovado a safe haven for blue whales in Chile
- Chile declared some 100,000 hectares (247,100 acres) in the Gulf of Corcovado in Northern Patagonia a marine protected area, the highest category of protection.
- The area is an important feeding and breeding ground for endangered blue whales as well as home to numerous other marine mammal species.
- However, it represents only a small fraction of the blue whales’ range, so scientists say additional conservation efforts must continue.

In Chile’s Patagonia, another salmon plant angers water defenders
- The Dumestre salmon plant near the Chilean city of Puerto Natales is receiving backlash from conservationists who say the facility will dump waste into Patagonian waters.
- The plant can process over 70,000 tons of fish per year, requiring the management of 23,000 cubic meters of industrial liquid waste and the movement of 350 ships in the Señoret canal.
- Local activists say the community wasn’t properly consulted about their needs before the plant was opened.

After decades away, rare Peruvian seabird nests on island freed of invaders
- Chañaral Island off the coast of Chile used to be a prime nesting site for the Peruvian diving petrel, but the species largely disappeared from the island after the introduction of invasive rabbits and foxes.
- In 2013, researchers and wildlife managers eradicated these invasive species from Chañaral, and in 2019, a team began to lure the diving petrels back to the island by creating artificial nests and playing petrel calls.
- These efforts paid off: in November 2022, a Peruvian diving petrel chick hatched in a naturally dug burrow, generating optimism for the species’ future on the island.

Fishing communities create marine refuges to protect Chile’s biodiversity
- In Chile’s Valparaíso region, artisanal fishers have created grassroots marine reserves to protect marine biodiversity.
- The areas are small, some of them just 15 hectares (37 acres) in size, but they provide a haven for marine creatures to grow and reproduce.
- This growth can contribute to regenerating coastal biodiversity, making the region more resilient to climate change, while the fisherfolk can benefit from a greater availability of resources in the long term.

Indigenous Kawésqar take on salmon farms in Chile’s southernmost fjords
- Sixty-seven salmon farms exist within Kawésqar National Reserve in southern Chile, an area that formed part of the Kawésqar Indigenous people’s ancestral lands, and another 66 concessions are under consideration there.
- The salmon industry claims the farms only occupy 0.06% of the reserve, which covers a marine area of 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres), and have a legitimate presence in the area.
- But Kawésqar communities accuse the farms of taking up the fjords where their sacred areas and fishing grounds are, of violating their rights on their own territory, and of compromising the ecosystem of the entire reserve through severe pollution.
- Kawésqar communities, with the support of various NGOs, are pursuing numerous legal avenues aimed at excluding salmon farms from the reserve.

Chile’s denial of Dominga port project is a just energy transition victory and lesson (commentary)
- Last week, Chile rejected the Dominga copper and iron mining project and its port, proposed for a location near the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve.
- Dominga’s estimated 20 to 30 years of operation would have jeopardized a marine biodiversity hotspot, along with human livelihoods and communities’ access to basic resources.
- “Dominga’s rejection is a victory for environmental justice and a lesson about the underlying tensions in the energy transition,” writes the author of a new op-ed.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

In Patagonia, a puma’s life is decided by political borders
- Human-wildlife conflict has caused a decline in the puma population in parts of Argentinian Patagonia, research shows.
- One of Patagonia’s emblematic species, the puma is treated very differently by Argentina and Chile, the two countries that share the region.
- The Argentinian province of Chubut pays a puma bounty to incentivize the hunting of pumas, as a measure to counter livestock killings.
- Chile has outlawed puma hunting and has found a delicate balance between ranching and conservation.

In Chile, drought and human expansion threaten a unique national park
- La Campana National Park in Chile is home to threatened species of plants and animals, many found nowhere else.
- The region has been suffering a 12-year drought, and in spite of rains this year, experts say it’s too early to say whether the climate trend has been reversed.
- The park also faces pressure from expanding farmland and urbanization, including the conversion of native vegetation to fruit monocultures, and the encroachment of domestic animals that can spread disease to wildlife.

‘They paid for it with misery’: Q&A with Chile dam critic Jose Marihuan Ancanao
- Jose Marihuan Ancanao, president of the Ayin Mapu La Peña community, spoke to Mongabay’s Maxwell Radwin about the impact of hydropower plants in parts of the Chilean Andes that are home to Indigenous people with a spiritual connection to rivers and the surrounding mountains.
- Marihuan was relocated in the early 2000s by a different hydropower plant and, although relocation isn’t a threat this time around, is witnessing the construction of another mega dam near his community.
- The 90-megawatt Rucalhue power plant has resulted in the felling of nationally protected trees sacred to the Pehuenche and, once finished, would flood some ancestral land.

Dam construction ignites Indigenous youth movement in southern Chile
- Dam construction on the Bío Bío watershed has plagued Indigenous Mapuche-Pehuenche communities in south-central Chile for decades, with many families having to relocate due to flooding of ancestral lands.
- The 90-megawatt Rucalhue hydropower plant, located near the town of Santa Bárbara, is the latest project causing controversy among local communities, who say they’re sick of battling infrastructure projects that disrespect their culture and traditions.
- Young people have been particularly outspoken against the project, staging sit-ins at the work site, sending petitions to government agencies, and helping organize a local plebiscite.
- Hydropower plants, while less polluting than many other forms of energy generation, still require the clearing of trees and the disrupting of river flows, which can have a significant impact on surrounding ecosystems.

Fish-feed industry turns to krill, with unknown effects on the Antarctic ecosystem
- The Antarctic krill fishing industry has been growing in the past two decades.
- The global growth of fish farming is driving the demand for Antarctic krill as an alternative to wild fish in fish feeds, amid the depletion of many wild fish stocks.
- Independent scientists say the krill fishery could have a detrimental effect on Antarctica’s predator populations, which are also suffering from the impacts of global warming.
- The krill industry is expanding its fleet and planning to significantly increase catches in the next few years.

Putting a price on water: Can commodification resolve a world water crisis?
- In 2018, a trader listed water on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and then in 2020 introduced a futures market so consumers can factor the cost of water into their investment plans. After a slow start, traders expect the market to grow more strongly in 2023.
- Some analysts see this as a positive step, allowing market adjustments to provide consumers with the cheapest and most efficient way of buying water. Others disagree, saying that water, like air, should not be commodified as it is a fundamental human right and must be available to all.
- Critics fear that creating a water market is a first step toward a future in which just a few companies will be able to charge market rents for what should be a free natural resource. Huge questions remain over water allocations for industry, agribusiness and smallholders, cities, and traditional and Indigenous peoples.
- The clash between these economic and socioenvironmental worldviews isn’t just occurring internationally. The conflict over water regulation is evident in many nations, including Brazil, which lays claim to the world’s biggest supply of freshwater, and Chile, currently suffering from its most severe drought ever.

A new method assesses health of Chile’s headwaters, and it’s not good news
- Headwaters are vital to ecosystem health and have been difficult to study, but now a group of researchers has developed a new method that relies on remote sensing to assess headwater vulnerability at multiple scales.
- Using the method, they assessed 2,292 headwaters in south-central Chile and found nearly two-thirds of the headwaters were affected by climate change and 23% by land use and land cover change; all of the headwaters were experiencing drought conditions.
- Chile has been in the grip of a megadrought for more than a decade now, with precipitation in south-central Chile decreasing by nearly 40% since 2010. Experts say water management suffers under water privatization, enshrined by the 1980 Constitution.
- Chile and Argentina host the only temperate rainforests in South America, with high levels of endemism, but nearly half of the native forests in the coastal zone of central-southern Chile have been replaced by tree plantations.

Chinese investment in Latin America plagues people and nature: Report
- A report from the Collective on Chinese Financing and Investments, Human Rights and the Environment (CICDHA) lays out the impact that Chinese-funded infrastructure, energy and mining projects have had in Latin America.
- The report looked at 26 projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
- It found almost all of them contributed to deforestation and water pollution, as well as human rights violations against local and Indigenous communities.
- CICDHA’s report lays out numerous recommendations for improving the behavior of companies carrying out projects in Latin America, but expresses doubt about China’s willingness to make a good-faith attempt at improvements.

Fires threaten vital peatland in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego
- Fires that started in mid-January continue to burn through forest, peatland and grassland near Chile’s Karukinka Natural Park on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the Americas.
- Conservationists are especially worried about the damage being done to the peatlands, an ecosystem that sequesters twice as much carbon as the Earth’s entire forest cover.
- Members of the Selk’nam Indigenous group, which was expelled from the area more than a century ago and is now attempting to return, say they’re concerned about the preservation of their ancestral territory.
- Due to the logistical difficulties of combating fires in such a remote area, rangers at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) say they’re hoping for international assistance from Argentina and the United States.

Fighting a Chile mining project with science: Q&A with biologist Maritza Sepúlveda
- A recently approved mining project on the Chilean coast has sparked concerns from scientists about the potential impacts on the marine mammals living in the nearby Humboldt Archipelago.
- The channel between the islands and the mainland are home to 15 species of cetaceans, including fin whales, which feed in the area where the mining port will be built — putting them at threat of ship strikes.
- The mining project was previously rejected by the provincial after scientists raised their concerns; among them was marine biologist Maritza Sepúlveda, who studies the marine mammals of the Humboldt Archipelago.
- She says the marine reserve that currently covers just three of the eight islands in the archipelago needs to be expanded to cover a much wider area, noting that “animals don’t recognize administrative regions.”

Chile’s burrowing parrot marks 35 years of a slow but successful recovery
- The Chilean subspecies of the burrowing parrot used to be on the brink of extinction, with small fragmented populations scattered throughout the country.
- Conservation measures adopted 35 years ago have now seen the number of parrots increase from 217 to nearly 4,500.
- Key to this success has been the protection of one of the bird’s key habitats, Río de los Cipreses National Reserve, and the native plants it depends on for food.
- Conservationists say they’re hopeful the burrowing parrot is on track to repopulating areas from where it has gone extinct; sightings have even been reported near Santiago, Chile’s capital.

Green light for mining project raises red flags for Chile penguin reserve
- A mining and port project that could threaten penguins and other marine species has been approved near Chile’s Humboldt Archipelago.
- The approval has sparked widespread criticism from the scientific community, civil society, government officials and politicians, who say it ignores conservation science and prioritizes business interests.
- Politicians and conservationists from civil society organizations say they will go to court to try to stop the project.

Enhancing biodiversity through the belly: Agroecology comes alive in Chile
- Agroecology, the practice of ecological principles in farming, is coming to life in a corner of Chile through different faces and practices.
- Like individual bees working toward a common, greater goal, practitioners of agroecology tend have a positive multiplication effect in their territory.
- From food producers to beekeepers to chefs, these practitioners show that scaling up agroecology requires deconstructing implicit knowledge hierarchies, a disposition to learning continuously, and sharing through horizontal networks.

In Chile, a prickly coalition tries to bring a salt flat back to life
- Indigenous communities, environmental activists and a mining company have agreed on a set of measures to try to save the Salar de Punta Negra salt flat in northern Chile.
- Communities say the extraction of groundwater by copper miner Minera Escondida has drained the salt lake and caused irreparable environmental harm.
- Under a court-mediated settlement, all sides have agreed to a series of scientific studies to help identify the cause of the problem and options for addressing it.
- Not everyone is happy about the agreement, however, with some criticizing the meager budget allocation for carrying out the studies compared to the much larger funding for publishing the results.

Chile’s marine protected areas aren’t safe from its salmon farms
- Mongabay has mapped out the salmon-farming concessions off Chile’s coast and how they overlap with its patchwork of marine protected areas.
- In Chile’s four southernmost regions, five protected areas have salmon-farming concessions within them, with one having more than 300. This threatens the unique ecosystems of Patagonia.
- The 416 concessions that lie inside marine protected areas belong to 32 companies, the top three of which control more than a third of the concessions.
- In 2012, the Comau Fjord witnessed a massive coral die-off that researchers linked to a combination of natural volcanic activity and water oxygen depletion caused by salmon farming.

Researchers rush to understand kelp forests as harvesting increases
- A growing seaweed industry based on the production of alginate, a thickener used in the food, textiles and pharmaceutical industries, has driven a boom in harvesting of kelp off the coasts of Chile and Peru.
- At the same time, researchers are warning that kelp remains relatively understudied, and that large-scale harvesting of kelp forests could have significant ecosystem impacts.
- To fill this information gap and push for sustainable management of this resource, scientists are carrying out important research, but have been stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patagonia’s blue whales besieged by hundreds of boats, study finds
- Blue whales feeding off Chile’s north Patagonia coast have to dodge hundreds of vessels daily, most of them serving the area’s salmon farms.
- Marine traffic in the area is so intense that scientists have described it as a “neural network” of connections between salmon farms.
- The various impacts range from collisions, which can result in the death of whales, to noise pollution that prevents the whales from feeding properly.
- The researchers behind the study have called for measures to mitigate the vessel traffic intensity and be more mindful of the whales in the area.

Rewilding public lands in Patagonia and beyond: Q&A with Kris Tompkins
- In the early 1990s, Kris and Doug Tompkins began buying up vast amounts of land in Chile and Argentina and setting it aside for conservation.
- Since the early 2000s, their non-profit Tompkins Conservation has donated over 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of wilderness in Chile and Argentina, which spurred the permanent protection of nearly 6 million hectares (15 million acres) and the establishment of 13 new national parks.
- The Tompkins had performed “a kind of capitalist jujitsu move” as Kris Tompkins put it in her 2020 TED talk: “We deployed private wealth from our business lives and deployed it to protect nature from being devoured by the hand of the global economy.”
- Kris Tompkins spoke about her organization’s conservation work, rewilding, and the costs of our current industrial model during a February 2021 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

Illegal fishing: The great threat to Latin America’s marine sanctuaries
- An investigative collaboration by Mongabay Latam, Ciper in Chile, Cuestión Pública in Colombia, and El Universo in Ecuador looked at illegal fishing and the threats it poses to Latin America’s marine sanctuaries.
- The investigation revealed suspected illegal fishing activities in marine protected areas in those three Latin American countries as well as Mexico.
- Many Latin American marine protected areas do not have enough surveillance or budget to prevent these crimes, and in some cases lack even a management plan defining a monitoring strategy.
- It is in this context that foreign fleets, particularly from China, including boats with a history of illegal fishing, also cross marine sanctuaries during their journeys.

The controversial hunt for a multibillion-dollar treasure in a Chilean park
- The treasure is thought to consist of 800 barrels of gold coins, jewels and precious stones, and is estimated to be worth $10 billion.
- In 2020, crews searching for the treasure began to use backhoes, causing erosion in Archipiélago de Juan Fernández National Park in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
- The crews began using heavy machinery without an environmental impact evaluation because SEA, the government’s Environmental Evaluation Service, dismissed the need for one.

A Chilean archipelago rivaling the Galápagos fends off invasive species
- Juan Fernández Archipelago National Park in Chile is home to a wealth of species found nowhere else on Earth, where the proportion of endemic plants surpasses even the more celebrated Galápagos Islands.
- Among the native bird species here is the pink-footed shearwater, which breeds only on the Juan Fernández islands and another Chilean island, but is threatened by the livestock and feral dogs, cats, rabbits and coatis introduced by humans.
- To prevent these animals from destroying or stealing the shearwaters’ nesting burrows and eating the birds or their young, a fence is being built around a critical nesting site.
- These concerted efforts to save the pink-footed shearwater, including a successful rabbit cull on one of the islands, make the species the first marine bird to be protected within a national conservation plan.

Video: ‘Don’t give up!’ The last known Loa water frogs produce 200 tadpoles
- The last known 14 Loa water frogs (Telmatobius dankoi) were evacuated from a swiftly vanishing stream in northern Chile last year and taken to a zoo in the capital, Santiago.
- In late October this year, after more than a year of meticulous care, they have produced 200 tadpoles.
- Because water frogs require very specific conditions for survival, they are especially vulnerable to threats from development, drought, pollution and disease.
- The goal for the captive Loa water frogs is to breed enough healthy individuals to release them back into to the wild. But until they have a safe home to go to, they will remain in the protection of the zoo.

500 years of species loss: Humans drive defaunation across Neotropics
- A new study indicates that human activities, such as overhunting, habitat loss, and fires, have contributed to a more than 56% decline in species in mammal assemblages in the American tropics.
- The study drew on animal inventories at more than 1,000 Neotropical study sites, from studies published in the past 30 to 40 years, but with data going back to the time of European colonization of the American tropics.
- The Amazon and Pantanal wetland regions are considered to be relatively “faunally intact,” according to the study, but the current fires in these regions would be adversely affecting wildlife and their habitats.
- The researchers say they hope their findings can inform effective conservation policies, such as better management and policing of existing protected areas, and efforts to stop illegal hunting, deforestation and fires.

Chilean authorities eye controversial Cruz Grande port project
- The marine conservation NGO Oceana has requested that the environmental permit for the Cruz Grande port project in Chile be revoked for not complying with a deadline for starting work on-site.
- The project may also be damaging threatened plants at the project site, violating the terms of the permit.
- Scientists say that the Cruz Grande port project has an inadequate environmental baseline development analysis.
- Therefore, the port is endangering one of the most biodiverse marine protected areas in the country.

Chile: Expedition to the end of the world, where humpback whales are thriving
- Mongabay Latam joined an expedition to the Francisco Coloane Marine Park near the southern tip of Chile, where the humpback whale population has risen dramatically — from 40 individuals in 2003 to 190 in 2019.
- The park, established in 2003, remains without a management or administrative structure, but that is changing with the development of a conservation and sustainable development plan underway.
- Although the whale population in the area is growing, threats remain, including entanglement in fishing gear, contamination from nearby salmon farms and ship traffic and noise pollution from coal mines.

Chile’s biosphere reserves get supersized, but protection isn’t a given
- Three biosphere reserves in Chile were expanded last year to include buffer zones and transition areas.
- Biosphere reserves are not included in Chilean legislation, so their protection is not guaranteed under the law.
- Experts say that referencing the reserves and their buffer and transition zones in future laws will help ensure their preservation.

In Chile, scientists seek the cause of blue whales’ mystery skin lesions
- Blue whales in Chile have been plagued with serious skin lesions, blister-like sores that can cover their whole bodies.
- Following a study that confirmed the presence of persistent organic pollutants in the bodies of blue whales in southern Chile, a second study is underway to determine the cause of the lesions.
- Although the results of the second study have yet to be released, scientists believe the lesions could be linked to commercial salmon farming.

Unsung Species: One of Earth’s rarest land mammals clings to a hopeful future (commentary)
- South America’s huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus) is the Western Hemisphere’s most endangered large land mammal, a fleet-footed Patagonian deer. The species once enjoyed broad distribution, but its numbers have been fractured into roughly 100 small disconnected populations, with huemul totals likely less than 1500 individuals.
- Historically, the huemul was diminished by habitat destruction, poachers, livestock competition and alien predators (especially dogs). More recently climate change may be playing a role, hammering Patagonian coastal fisheries, so possibly causing local villagers to increase hunting pressure on the Andean mountain deer.
- The huemul also suffers from being an unsung species. Unlike the polar bear or rhino, it lacks a broad constituency. If it is to be saved, the species requires broad recognition and support beyond the scientific community. This story is the first in a series by biologist Joel Berger in an effort to make such animals far better known.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fiscal meltdown at Easter Island park drives rift among islanders
- At the start of 2018, the Chilean government transferred the management of Rapa Nui National Park on Easter Island to the Ma’u Henua Polynesian Indigenous Community.
- By then, however, there was already conclusive evidence of serious financial inconsistencies in the park’s provisional management by Ma’u Henua’s board.
- During a 20-month period, about $566,000 in payments for services and supplies wound up in accounts belonging to the board chairman’s close relatives.
- The conflict has divided residents of Rapa Nui, resulted in a mob beating and a courtroom set on fire, and sparked ongoing investigations by Chile’s public prosecutor’s office.

What’s at stake after Chile cancels its hosting of COP25?
- Massive protests triggered by social unrest over economic, justice and environmental issues have forced Chile to cancel its hosting of this year’s U.N. climate change summit in December.
- As the organizer of the 25th Conference of Parties, Chile was to have led the effort to bolster ambitions in the fight against climate change aimed at ensuring that global temperatures don’t increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
- On Oct. 31, a day after Chile’s president announced the cancellation, Spain offered to hold the conference on the scheduled dates, Dec. 2-13, in Madrid.

The tragedy of the fishermen of Ventanas, ‘the Chilean Chernobyl’
- The sea near Ventanas, Chile, was generous in the 1980s. There were urchins, limpets, clams and fish. Tourists summered there and fishermen thrived.
- That all changed as the local industrial park grew. In 2000 the National Health Service discovered serious heavy-metal and fecal-bacteria contamination of local shellfish, and prohibited their sale, effectively shuttering the local seafood industry.
- Fishermen attempted to revive their aquaculture operations, despite a series of oil spills. But poisoning episodes in 2018 quashed that initiative.
- “Could they have seen us as a dumpsite? Like their backyard? … I don’t know how the government saw us,” said Carlos Vega, a longtime Ventanas fisherman.

Scientists emphasize disease control in booming aquaculture sector
- The World Organisation for Animal Health held a conference in Santiago, Chile, focused on aquatic animals
- Compared with land animals, little is known about diseases of aquatic animals.
- Yet experts are looking to aquaculture to support human food security in the coming years.

Chilean band Newen Afrobeat sings of a future it hopes to see
- Santiago, Chile-based band Newen Afrobeat’s songs are infused with themes to do with ecology, indigenous and women’s rights, and cultural understanding.
- Heavily influenced by Afrobeat, the musical style made famous by Nigeria’s Fela Kuti, Newen is fronted by a powerful trio of women singer/songwriters.
- Mongabay interviewed percussionist and Newen co-founder Tomas Pavez from his home in Santiago.

Having taken a toll in Chile, salmon industry arrives in Argentina
- Argentina’s National Aquaculture Project, signed with Norway in March 2018, aims to spur the development of the salmon industry in Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago at the southern tip of South America.
- Environmentalists and scientists fear that errors committed on the Chilean side of Patagonia will be repeated, to the detriment of the environment on the Argentinian side.
- Among the environmental impacts of the Chilean salmon industry are escapee fish that become established as introduced species, pollution from farms’ waste food and feces, and the overuse of antibiotics.

Chile pledges to make its fishing vessel tracking data public
- In mid-May Chile finalized an agreement to publicly share proprietary data from its satellite system for monitoring fishing boats via Global Fishing Watch (GFW), an online interactive mapping platform that tracks ship movements across the globe.
- The country joins Indonesia and Peru, whose data already appear on the GFW platform, as well as Namibia, Panama and Costa Rica, which have pledged to do so.
- Countries are motivated to go public by the prospect of enhancing their ability to enforce fishing regulations, keep an eye on foreign fishing fleets operating outside or transiting through their waters, and, in Chile’s case, prevent the spread of disease in its salmon aquaculture industry.

Meet the winners of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize
- This year is the 30th anniversary of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
- Also called the Green Nobel Prize, the annual award honors grassroots environmental heroes from six continental regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Central and South America, Africa, and islands and island nations.
- This year’s winners are Alfred Brownell from Liberia, Bayarjargal Agvaantseren from Mongolia, Ana Colovic Lesoska from North Macedonia, Jacqueline Evans from the Cook Islands, Alberto Curamil from Chile, and Linda Garcia from the United States.

Weak governance undermines South America’s ocean ecosystems
- Illegal fishing, overfishing and pollution are common problems in the waters of South America.
- For instance, Ecuadoran small-scale fishing captures at least 250,000 sharks every year, most of them apparently illegally, and 62 percent of Chile’s fisheries are overexploited or depleted.
- But the overarching problem, the one that enables the rest, is weak governance, according to experts.
- This article encapsulates a series of stories by Mongabay Latam examining the state of the sea in Chile, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.

Virus may have caused mysterious foot disease in Chile’s rare huemul deer
- Researchers say they believe they have identified the potential cause of a foot disease that affected 24 huemul deer in Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins National Park between 2005 and 2010.
- Preliminary results from tests on tissue samples taken from an infected fawn suggest that a parapoxvirus, a group of viruses that commonly infect and cause lesions in livestock, could have been the main cause of the foot disease.
- If the pox virus is indeed the disease agent, then it’s an additional threat to the endangered species because these viruses are highly contagious, researchers say.
- The study’s authors say they suspect the parapoxvirus may have come from cattle that was illegally introduced in the national park in 1991.

Latam Eco Review: Pumas hate disco and Ecuador’s newly described glass frog

Ecuador’s most recently described glass frogs, a model plan for coastal management in Colombia, and using lights to scare away pumas in Chile were among the top recent stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam. Colombia: Integrated coastal management protects local species and culture A fisheries zoning plan is protecting both local species and artisanal fishing […]

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