Panguipulli, Chile -- Fuchsia magellanica, the wild species from which all its gaudy namesakes descend, grows wild everywhere here. In wet coastal areas, I marveled at specimens growing as small trees 15 to 20 feet high. The sheer biological abundance -- and uniqueness -- of Chile's south is mind-boggling. South America is the most biologically isolated continent, bar Antarctica and Australia. And Chile is almost an island in South America, cut off by the desiccating high plateau of the Atacama Desert on the north and the sheer cordillera of the Andes on the east. Far south, where the Andes trail off into pampas, the intact glacial mass of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field stretches from peak to fjord cutting off the rest of Chile and joining with the Pacific Ocean's cold current fencing off the west. Almost every species I encounter here is new to me. Conifers here, like alerce, have small leaves instead of needles -- but in form and shape they look like scraggly giant sequoias, and live as long.
Here in the Lake District, most of the old growth was logged off fifty years ago. But on steep slopes that in the Rockies or Sierra would be brush and scree after such an assault, a second-growth forest of mixed species of Nothofagus (false beeches) already stretches skyward. The stately coigue the size of mature oaks are, I am assured, mere "teenagers" of 40 or 50 years. Water makes the difference, and the trees have learned to take advantage of it and reach for the sun. One species, roble (Nothofagus obliqua,) -- hualle when young -- is given a different name -- pellin -- when it reaches 80 years of age and the color of its wood changes from tawny yellow to red.
But stewardship of Chile's incredible natural wealth is a new skill not yet fully mastered. Dozens of wealthy Chileans are purchasing enormous tracts of land for preservation, at least partly in grudging emulation of American philanthropist Doug Tompkins. But the legal and tax infrastructure to ensure that the results of these good intentions are permanent is missing. Salmon farming could have given the south a sustainable natural resource economy, but so voraciously were the salmon farms overbuilt and overcrowded, with early warning signs of disease ignored, that this year's yield will be only 50 percent of last year's -- a boom-and-bust cycle sadly reminiscent of mining.
The proposals for new dams on Chile's wild rivers are controversial -- sufficiently so that the outgoing government seems likely to leave the decision on whether or not to build them to its successor next year. But young and environmentally concerned Chileans are stunned to learn that in the U.S. and Europe the kind of endless sunlight that the Atacama possesses is viewed as a renewable energy bonanza. Chile could be the solar power house of South America. Such a commitment could give Chile electricity to trade with its otherwise uncollegial neighbors, such as Bolivia, which still refuses to sell Chile the natural gas it has in abundance, a truculence Chileans attribute to Bolivia's grievances over the War of the Pacific back in the 1870s. But ideas like solar power plants don't seem to be on the table yet here. Alternatives to the dams are not evident even to some of their strongest opponents.
Culture, as real conservatives would remind us, matters. Chile, which prides itself on getting this, may be the test bed. Tomorrow I leave. The Nothofagus and fuschias keep going.
Loading comments… 
