Cochamó is known far and wide as the “Yosemite of South America” and attracts droves of climbers and hikers each year. But as we write in the cover story of this issue, the neighboring and more extensive Puelo Valley is yet another wonderland landscape that has a spectacular network of rivers surrounded by grand mountains and lush green forest.

 

Recently, Puelo Patagonia, a Chilean conservation group based in Puerto Varas, made the bold move to purchase and protect the lands inside a massive property called Hacienda Puchegüín, equivalent to about 30 percent of the entire Cochamó district. Their longterm vision seeks to balance conservation with local development, an initiative well worth your support.  As Rodrigo Condeza writes in his column this issue, conserving nature can “involve those who live there so that conservation becomes part of their lives and their future.”

 

Also in Issue 29, Victoria Traxler writes about finding microplastics in remote, supposedly pristine Patagonian lakes; Gary Hughes takes us to the Nahuelbuta mountain range to show us what the environmental and social destruction caused by large-scale tree plantations looks like; Pedro Rivas writes about his historic, solo kayak expedition around Lake General Carrera; Patagon Journal interviews Amy Lewis of the WILD Foundation; and Ines de Ros writes about how a longtime sheep ranch at Estancia Cerro Guido is reinventing itself while protecting the puma in Patagonia. 

 

All those stories and more in the new issue of Patagon Journal! Subscribe or become a Premium Member to Patagon Journal and get extra benefits, purchase the magazine in our online store, or look for the magazine at stockists and newsstands.