Macarena Martinic wasn’t surprised earlier this year when the Chilean government said yes to extending the life of Los Bronces, a large, centuries-old open-pit copper mine in the Andes, an…
The pungent smell of manure as cows and sheep graze on the green pastures makes the campus of the University of Concepción in the Chilean city of Chillán look like…
The Comau, Reñihue and Reloncaví fjords, located in southern Chile’s Los Lagos region, are one-of-a-kind natural laboratories that host diverse species of crustaceans, sea anemones, sea cucumbers, polychaetes and corals.…
Las Chinchillas National Reserve is located in the hills of the Coquimbo region, in the province of Choapa, where more than a decade-long drought has turned the earth yellow. The…
Standing beside the Andean condor on Chile’s coat of arms is the huemul deer. The species, whose habitat stretches from central Chile all the way south to the tip of…
In the middle of an increasingly arid landscape, where Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, keeps expanding southward, a small forest less than a third the size of…
The photo speaks for itself: a woman lies on the ground with just her smiling face visible, her body covered by about 20 dead geese, the result of a “successful”…
Chile has a new marine protected area (MPA) in Patagonia that will safeguard an important feeding and breeding area for blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), a species listed as endangered by…
A recently opened salmon processing plant in southern Chile is raising concerns about whether environmental regulations were properly carried out to prevent contamination of marine ecosystems and clean drinking water.…
The Peruvian diving petrel is a tiny, thrush-sized seabird that spends more time in the water than in the air. True to its name, it plunges into the chilly waters…
Protecting the oceans is crucial to societies’ survival because, as the United Nations has recognized, they “drive the global systems that make the Earth a habitable place for humans.” The…
PUERTO NATALES/PUNTA ARENAS, Chile — Pristine waters, partially covered in sea ice, reflect the early morning light while a flock of flamingos basks in the warmth of the sun near…
Imagine having to choose between having water or a mining project in your backyard. Or between having a job or polluting your community. What would you choose? This dichotomy is…
“As a boy, my father killed pumas,” says Vincente Navarra, whose family has been raising sheep against the backdrop of Argentina’s Patagonian wilderness for generations. Navarra, a 71-year-old rancher who…
La Campana National Park, located in Chile’s Valparaíso region, is considered a jewel. It’s a biodiversity oasis in one of the most densely populated areas of the country. Inside the…
SANTA BÁRBARA, Chile — The Bío Bío River is the second-longest in Chile, forming in the Andes near the Argentine border and running 380 kilometers (240 miles) northwest before emptying…
SANTA BÁRBARA, Chile — For the last 30 years, more and more hydroelectric power plants have been popping up along Chile’s Bío Bío River, the second-largest in the country. Every…
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay/PUNTA ARENAS, Chile/PORDENONE, Italy — A mountain of krill meal has been packed inside a huge warehouse: divided into bags and stacked in hundreds of piles that stretch almost…
A 2020 move to open a futures water market on the Chicago exchange has resulted in a heated conflict between those who say monetizing is a positive step, and those who see speculation as bad for the environment and traditional peoples.
Follow any river to its upper reaches and you will encounter the headwaters, the flowing streams that join to carry water, nutrients and life to downstream ecosystems and economies. Troubles…
China has spent the last two decades quietly establishing an economic foothold in Latin America, a region that has traditionally relied on Western investment. It’s become the top trade partner…
A forest fire that has been spreading for weeks in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego is threatening the ancestral land of an Indigenous group and destroying some of the world’s highest…
Maritza Sepúlveda grew up in San Felipe, a town far from the ocean in central Chile. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, her curiosity about the ocean began early…
The story of Cristián Bonacic and Río de los Cipreses National Reserve is, in a way, a story of love at first sight: they “met” in the summer of 1986,…
The approval of a mining and port project in Chile has generated a wave of outrage in the country. The Dominga project was rejected in 2017 due to its potential…
Consider the bee. It’s small, and while over a lifetime it can pollinate up to 5,000 flowers, that’s only enough to produce a single teaspoon of honey. But bees don’t…
Over the past 27 years, mining for copper by Minera Escondida, a company co-owned by Anglo-Australian mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto, has resulted in a dramatic reduction of water…
In 2003, biologist Vreni Häussermann and a group of researchers started surveying underwater life at a site in the Comau Fjord, in Chilean Patagonia. The team found that sea cucumbers,…
The kelp forests of the oceans are a habitat for a wide range of marine species, rivaling even the great tropical forests for sheer richness of biodiversity, according to scientists…
Researchers have for the first time been able to show visually the impacts that marine traffic is having on the world’s biggest animal off the north of Chile’s Patagonia region.…
