Wetlands are some of the world’s most important carbon sinks. Marshy areas soak up atmospheric carbon far more quickly than trees, to the extent that as well as being crucial biodiversity hotspots, wetlands collectively store twice as much carbon as all the forests in the world.
These wetlands don’t just have to be vast areas like Africa’s Okavango Delta either, but can be found even in the most unlikely urban environments. One of these is the town of Llanquihue in the Chilean Lake District, where the non-profit organisation Legado Chile Foundation, is working to bring a unique environment back to life on a project supported by the Swoop Conservation Fund. On a recent trip to the area, I visited their project to learn more about their work in person.
Threatened wetlands
Llanquihue (pronounced Yan-kee-hway) sits about four miles (6 km) north of Puerto Varas, the main tourist gateway to Los Lagos, also known as the Chilean Lake District. It has a stunning location on the shore of Lake Llanquihue but is otherwise a pretty unassuming place, the sort of town you might drive through on the way to somewhere else. It felt like an unlikely setting for a pioneering conservation project, though I was soon to understand that that was precisely the point.
At the Legado Chile office, I was met by Magdalena Huerta who was to give me a tour of the organisation’s work. On a large map spread over a table, she explained the local ecosystem to me and how it had been affected by unplanned development.
Llanquihue town sits on the delta of the Maullin river on the lake, and is surrounded by wetlands and small creeks – real hotspots for biodiversity. All this freshwater made it very attractive for local manufacturing industries, and since the late 1960s the town grew in a very unplanned way. As factories and houses popped up everywhere, the local ecosystem began to suffer. Waterways were filled in or used for dumping waste. In the last sixty years, it’s estimated that Llanquihue’s wetlands have lost around 92% of their surface area. Much of what remains is polluted or damaged by invasive species like lotus.
There are 16 fractured wetlands in Llanquihue, with Legado Chile currently working on seven of them, including Baquedano, El Loto, Los Helechos and Las Ranas. Magdalena explained that despite the threats to their existence, they remained important biosphere reserves. Over half the migratory birds in Chile pass through here, and there are around a hundred species of plants and seven species of native fish. Several species exclusive to Chile’s wetlands also make their home here, including the Plumbeous rail, a charming wading bird, the Chilean frog and a rare species of myrtle tree.
Just because these wetlands were now largely urban then, it didn’t mean that they weren’t ecologically important. Far from it, said Magdalena, adding that there was another key factor in their work: ‘The restoration activities allow people to connect with nature in deep and meaningful ways. It not only allows one to enjoy nature in a different setting, as it is an urban ecosystem, but it also allows people to actively contribute to the restoration and conservation of these ecosystems, which are facing huge threats from diverse sources.’
Practical conservation
My day at Legado Chile was to be a practical one; Magdalena was keen for me to learn about their work by getting some dirt under my fingernails. Before that however, she was keen to show me some before and after photos. A lot of conservation and rewilding work is hard and deeply unglamorous, so she wanted me to see what the end results could be.
The photos she showed me of the Baquedano wetland before Legado Chile started work there were very dispiriting. It looked like a junkyard – a dumping ground for old cars, washing machines and lots and lots of plastic rubbish. It was exactly the sort of messy corner of a town that we all so frequently overlook. It was certainly hard to imagine any wildlife thriving there.
But two years of solid years of work with volunteers from the local community had completely transformed it. After taking care of the trash, the next stage was to patiently remove invasive plant species. Lotus was a particular enemy, and in its place local plant species were cultivated and reintroduced. The end result photos were extraordinary: a beautiful green corner, thriving with wildlife.
I was glad to have that picture in mind when I was taken to the site that Legado Chile is currently working on. It was another patch of land that looked unpromising to my untrained eye, scruffy and unloved. I was handed gloves and tools and joined a group of local volunteers who gave me my instructions and pointed out which plants were native and which were invasive. For the next four hours, we weeded furiously, digging out plants that had taken root between the native beech trees. And we removed trash. A lot of trash.
As we worked, Magdalena explained more about how the wetlands restoration was more than just a group of enthusiasts keen to clean up their backyard. The entire Llanquihue community, from residents and schools to businesses and civic authorities, had all helped shape the project, which had then been developed in partnership with the Landscape Architecture Master Program from the Universidad de Chile. The end result was a multi-year green infrastructure plan to restore the urban ecosystem and develop a continuous network of ecosystem corridors, while at the same time integrating social programmes to allow complete community ownership of the project. The photos she had shown me were of the pilot restoration project they had completed at the Baquedano wetland on the northern edge of the city.
A wetland restored
The weeding was tiring but satisfying. Chatting with the volunteers, it was clear the sense of pride they took in their work. Several of them had children who had participated in the outreach projects that Legado Chile ran with local schools to teach children about their local environment. After cleaning up, the impact we’d had on one small corner was clear, but I was keen to see the end result of a completed project. I wanted to see Baquedano.
The Baquedano wetland was another urban space, surrounded by houses. But it was like another world from where we had just been. Four years after work had first begun here, the wetland was thriving. There was greenery and water flowing everywhere. A series of walkways led around its edge so that the community could enjoy this green space without damaging the nature that had returned.
In one corner, we visited a colony of hooded gulls who were happily nesting in the centre of the two. The restoration of a damaged urban ecosystem in Chile meant that these gulls could continue to thrive here, while also providing temporary shelter for birds that migrate every year along the Pacific coast to north America. And Llanqihue’s residents could enjoy another green space amid the concrete, rescued by their own hard work.
Visiting Legado Chile was something of a wake up call. As a guide who has worked in the great wildernesses of Patagonia, experiencing an urban ecosystem was something new – especially when it was one rescued from the ignominy of being a forgotten patch of land, nothing more than a dumping ground for rubbish. It was a thrill to see what had been created here.’
‘We want people to visit the restoration projects,’ concluded Magdalena, ‘because knowing is caring. We establish emotional connections to the places that we visit. Rewilding has the potential of creating unique and transformative experiences for people who can take that message home and spread it among their communities, and increase the impact of our work.’
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