Patagonia National Park
Chile · Americas
About
Patagonia National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Patagonia) is a national park in the Aysén Region of Chile. Once a private nature reserve operated as a public-access park, it was donated to the government of Chile by Tompkins Conservation in 2018.
The heart of the park is the Chacabuco Valley, an ecologically significant east-west valley that forms a pass over the Andes Mountains, resulting in a transition zone between the Patagonian steppe grasslands of Argentine Patagonia and the southern beech forests of Chilean Patagonia to the west. It is located between General Carrera Lake to the north and Cochrane Lake to the south and extends to the Argentine border to the east. The park contains a network of trails and campgrounds, as well as a visitor center.
The park was created by Conservacion Patagonica, a nonprofit founded with the intent of protecting Patagonia's wildlands and ecosystems. Conservacion Patagonica merged into Tompkins Conservation in 2018.
On 29 January 2018, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Kris Tompkins, President of Tompkins Conservation, signed a decree creating 5 national parks, one of which was Patagonia National Park. Parque Patagonia was gifted to the Chilean state and combined with Lago Jeinimeni National Reserve, Lago Cochrane National Reserve, and other additional lands to form Patagonia National Park, with a combined area of 260,000 hectares (640,000 acres).
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.