Getting It Right

Drew and I are shouldering heavy bags of sawdust for the dry composting toilets as we hike the muddy trail into Cochamó Valley. Drew stops suddenly. “Shoot,” he says to me. “I almost forgot—there’s a message for you in the Refugio.” An hour later, I’m back at Refugio Cochamó, a rustic guesthouse deep in the forest, squinting over a dusty computer screen, hopped up on maté, tapping impatiently as my email loads at dial-up speed. Finally, the satellite and modem connect long enough to confirm what I’d suspected: I’ve been invited to write about the threats facing Cochamó for a Patagonia catalog. On the one hand, I’m elated. Cochamó needs defenders. On the other, the idea of saying anything at all about Cochamó scares me. It’s a paradox that plagues all environmental movements at their hearts: How do you protect a place without blowing it up and ultimately ruining it?

For the moment, Cochamó is OK—after several battles, sanity seems to prevail. In 2009, the Cochamó River watershed was protected through presidential decree as a Zona de Interes Turistico by thenpresident Michelle Bachelet, effectively canceling no less than 25 solicitations for nonconsumptive water rights (read, dams) in the region, including at least three that were slated for the Cochamó River itself. In recent years, clandestine and illegal efforts to build a road into the valley have been shut down, restarted, and shut down again by a mix of local grassroots activism and the ineptitude of the threatening entities who fail to comply with development requirements. Mediterráneo’s hydro project on the next river south, Manso River, was also blocked in 2017.

But as I write this, Mediterráneo is forging ahead with appeals for their project on the Manso. Meanwhile, Roberto Hagemann (a primary Mediterráneo stakeholder) and his associates are buying up mining rights across the region. This is the same Hagemann who spent the past decade procuring development rights to a 100,000-hectare parcel of land called Fundo Puchegüin, which stretches from the Reloncaví fjord to the Argentine border and encompasses climbing and trekking destinations in the Trinidad, El Anfiteatro and El Monstruo valleys. And with Hagemann’s old chum Sebastián Piñera coming back into Chile’s presidential office, the outlook for Cochamó’s future is murky at best.

Thus far, the accepted model for conservation seems to be to put the imperiled area in the public eye, encourage visitation and move people to protect it. But the result of this approach tends to be what Edward Abbey described as “industrial tourism.” It’s better than a dam, but it’s not as good as just leaving the place alone.

All of the media about Cochamó (to which I’ve contributedprobably more than anyone) is changing it irrevocably. It’s becomingcrowded, full of litter, and there are too many climbers vying for thesame routes and bivy sites. More ominous still, what to do with thegrowing amounts of human excrement that each season become agreater threat to the rivers and streams that are so clean you can drinkfrom them without purification.

What’s the solution, then? Not to talk about it? “Keep it secret,keep it safe” didn’t work in The Lord of the Rings, and it doesn’t inconservation, either. Big business will exploit your secret.

The answer must be to share, to seek support from individualsand companies who want to conserve the remaining wild places ofthis world. But to do so carefully, pragmatically.

Cochamó is not, as many like to say, the Yosemite of the South. It’snot a national park, a wildlife reserve or a UNESCO World Heritage site;it has no official protections or infrastructure. It’s a patchwork of privateparcels, each with unique owners, visitation rules and regulations. Ithas no trail crews, rangers, or search and rescue teams (though thesejobs are bravely carried out each season, unpaid, by campground hosts,arrieros, and visiting climbers and hikers). Cochamó works because asmall cadre of people love this place enough to protect it.

So, come. Please. Experience this place. But don’t simply visit, hike,climb, take pictures and leave. Figure out how to give back. Plan tospend some of your trip helping out: clean up campsites (not just yours),haul out the trash, ask locals how you can be useful. And if the timecomes when Cochamó falls under attack from extractive industries—when the time comes—come back ready to fight.

CONSERVATION REPORT BY CHRIS KALMAN