It’s a story as old as humanity itself: the conflict between farm and wilderness, between those raising livestock and predators looking for an easy lunch. Whether it’s ranchers and coyotes on the American plains, Maasai herders and lions, or shepherds versus wolves in the mountains of Europe, the question always remains: can people, livestock and apex predators happily coexist?
One estancia in Torres del Paine believes that they can, and is looking to both science and tradition to come up with solutions that allow it to keep its sheep ranching heritage alive while peacefully sharing its landscape with the pumas that the region is so famous for. I spoke to the team at Cerro Guido about their conservation efforts – and how guests at the estancia can experience them firsthand.
Gaucho culture
Estancia Cerro Guido is the largest and oldest working ranch in the Torres del Paine region. It spreads across nearly a quarter of a million acres (101,000 hectares) of land between the national park’s eastern boundary and the border with Argentina. It operates as a boutique hotel, but ranching remains at the core of its existence, with more than 4000 head of cattle and 18,000 sheep.
‘We are ranchers,’ Gonzalo Sánchez, one of Cerro Guido’s managers explained to me, ‘and as ranchers we have a historical conflict with pumas trying to eat our sheep.’
In the past, estancias dealt with pumas by hunting them. Every ranch would employ a gaucho called a Leonero, a hunter whose sole job was to kill pumas and who paid a bounty for every one that he shot. Although hunting pumas was made illegal in Chile as far back as 1980, the practice had continued in many places. As recently as 2017, Gonzalo tells me, Cerro Guido was employing Leoneros to kill dozens of pumas a year.
The pressures against hunting have been accompanied by a recognition of the economic value that pumas can bring through wildlife tourism. In some parts of Chile, some estancias have even decided to move away from ranching altogether, running only a few head of livestock or removing them entirely from the land to get into the eco-tourism business.
Gonzalo was adamant that this was never an option for Cerro Guido. ‘Culture in Patagonia is symbiotically linked with the economic activity that we do. Without a working estancia, you have no gaucho culture – and without gaucho culture, you have no Patagonia culture.’
Poachers turned gamekeepers
Cerro Guido decided that the best way to preserve its herds and the wildlife on its land was to turn its Leoneros into puma’s biggest champions. It wasn’t an easy prospect, Gonzalo admits. Patagonian culture is very conservative, and gauchos are possibly the most conservative of all. ‘They’re super stubborn,’ Gonzalo laughs.
The work of the Cerro Guido Foundation, which exists to promote truly sustainable tourism, was central to the project. Through its patient work, the Leoneros began to work as trackers rather than hunters, taking advantage of their immense knowledge of puma behaviour to work with the big cat organisation Panthera to bring some scientific rigour and logistical support to the new conservation project and to better understand the puma’s feeding behaviour (for more, see our interview with Panthera about puma conservation).
Knowing how and when pumas are likely to attack sheep was only one part of the equation. The ultimate aim of the project was to reduce those attacks to zero. For that, Cerro Guido recruited man’s best friend for help.
The world’s best sheep dogs
Dogs and ranching have always gone together. Gauchos spend long lonely hours in the saddle, and a sheep dog is a valuable companion. In Patagonia, sheep dogs have always been more like their western counterparts – better suited to rounding up livestock and barking at the sight of a threat, but leaving the active job of protection to the Leoneros.
Cerro Guido found a better model in the mountains of France and Italy, where tough livestock guardian dogs ward off any wolves tempted to make a snack of their flock. A number of Maremmano sheep dogs from these regions were imported to see if they could also protect against pumas.
‘We started to breed them at the estancia,’ Gonzalo told me, explaining that the puppies are raised directly alongside the sheep. ‘They get imprinted and truly feel part of the herd.’ Better yet, just the presence of these unfamiliar dogs can scare off puma in a way that other breeds can’t. ‘Whenever the dogs mark their territory, we found out that the pumas won’t go near the sheep. Pumas are very smart animals, and when they sense something weird, they’re not going to approach – they just won’t risk it.’
In addition to this Cerro Guido has set up box lights in certain fields of the estancia that have motion sensors. Acting as technological scarecrows, whenever they sense certain movement outside the fences they light up to imitate human presence. ‘In that way we can keep the Puma away from certain fields where we have animals,’ says Gonzalo.
Satellite data
The introduction of the Maremmano sheep dogs and the box lights have proved a great success, with an almost complete reduction in loss of livestock to pumas. For Gonzalo, the next stage is to make this model replicable across the region. Reminding me of the conservative mindset of many gauchos, he told me the key to this was to rely on collecting new scientific evidence rather than anecdotal accounts of how well the dogs were working. This involves creating a detailed map of how the animals move on the range.
Cerro Guido has worked with Panthera to capture local pumas and put GPS collars on them to track their movement. ‘In one we have sheep and guardian dogs with GPS collars, and in another field we run sheep with nothing else. The idea is to compare how efficient the dogs are against a control. We know that they work, but now we’re measuring their movement and collecting all the data, so we can create a scientific model that can be replicated and transferred to other estancias.’
The project, which is still running, will produce the hard data that the Cerro Guido can use to persuade other estancias to invest in guardian dogs and maintain their strong ranching culture as well as their pumas.
‘None of this will work if you’re the only ones doing the conservation work, because it’s such a big territory,’ says Gonzalo. Cerro Guido is located in a biological corridor that has the region’s highest concentration of pumas, running all the way from Torres del Paine to Laguna Amarga. ‘We want to explain to ranchers that there is a different way, that these two activities [ranching and conservation] can work together in a balance. This is the scientific data that’s demonstrating that it’s possible.’
Next steps
This scientific data will also be important in convincing estancias across the border to better protect the puma. Hunting pumas remains legal in Argentina – and pumas aren’t known to respect international borders. One puma that was collared in Cerro Guido had been regularly recorded as walking to El Calafate in Argentina and back in two days, a round trip of more than 100 miles (160 km). ‘We’re going to have to find out how to work around that because we don’t want to do all the conservation work on this side of the border, and then have the pumas go to Argentina and get killed,’ notes Gonzalo.
For now however, Cerro Guido’s approach appears to be working. Visitors to the estancia can take conservation trips during their stay and even spend time with the former Leoneros, all while still getting to enjoy the rich cultural experience of a working Patagonian estancia.
For Gonzalo, this is the project’s greatest success. ‘The gauchos had to economically sacrifice a lot while this project has been developing’, he concludes. ‘It was a huge decision, but we’ve been able preserve the real spirit of Patagonia – that is not just the wildlife, but its cultural heritage as well.’
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