Puerto Williams (Chile) (EFE).- At the gates of Antarctica, in the southernmost town in the world, the Chilean city of Puerto Williams, a research center was inaugurated to study the unexplored nature of Cape Horn and the impacts of the climate crisis in the area, in addition to preserving the culture of local communities.
The new facilities will house the Cape Horn International Center for Global Change Studies and Biocultural Conservation (CHIC), which combines natural and social sciences to investigate little-explored sub-Antarctic ecosystems, relating this knowledge to the knowledge of the communities local.
“We will do research from different perspectives, from education to hard science, on the biological and cultural conservation of a place that is still one of the 24 most pristine sites that exist in the world,” the director of the new facilities told EFE. inaugurated, Francisca Massardo.
The center, promoted by the University of Magallanes, is made up of several Chilean universities and an international network coordinated by the University of Texas, in the United States, among other institutions.
The inauguration this Monday was attended by local and national authorities, such as the Minister of Public Works of the Government of Chile, Jessica López Saffie, and the governor of the Magallanes region, Jorge Mauricio Flies.
Nature tourism in Cape Horn
Scrubbed by winds and rough seas, the islands that make up the southern tip of America, in sub-Antarctic latitudes, are home to unique marine and terrestrial ecosystems in the world, with a great diversity of fauna and flora that are preserved in lands that are almost unexplored by humans.
The Beagle Channel is where Puerto Williams is located, the border between Chile and Argentina: on the Argentine side, mass tourism developed years ago in the city of Ushuaia; on the southernmost Chilean side, the impact of tourism is less.
Among its objectives, the CHIC wants to promote economic development in Cape Horn that is compatible with the conservation of its biodiversity and local cultures, taking advantage of the attractiveness of the virgin nature of the area to promote tourism projects that avoid the establishment of more harmful industries. with the environment.
One of the main lines of the center is to promote bird watching tourism: the Magallanes region is home to more than 200 species of birds, and a hundred are endemic to the area -according to data from the Puerto Williams Anthropological Museum-, which inhabit in ecosystems as different as the high mountains or the rough sea of Cape Horn.
Challenges with the local community
Although the CHIC project wants to work together with the local community, there is suspicion from some sectors of Puerto Williams, especially from a part of the local indigenous community, the Yagan people, as the presidential delegate at the meeting admitted to EFE. Chilean Antarctic Province, María Luisa Muñoz.
Puerto Williams, with about 2,000 inhabitants and many young families, lacks several basic services, such as water treatment or medical fields such as pediatrics, and waste management is done from a dump very close to the main population of the yagans
Muñoz, born in Puerto Williams and also a member of the Yagan people, said that there is a “break in trust” between the residents of Puerto Williams and the CHIC environment, but she defended continuing to investigate the natural and cultural value of the Cabo de Ovens, as long as the locals participate in the development projects that derive from that knowledge.
“The Yagan people are alive, but the fight against stigma is always present. The history of the Yagan people is sold as a tourist attraction, but you don’t see any Yagan guiding cruises or explaining their history. The Yagans have been present in the territory for more than 7,000 years and they have a lot to offer”, said the delegate.