Marine Conservation: Protecting Patagonia’s Coastal Waters
Building upon decades of work creating terrestrial national parks, Tompkins Conservation–Chile is expanding our work to also focus on marine protected areas. The objective is to mirror land conservation efforts in Chilean Patagonia by creating coastal marine parks that complement new and existing terrestrial protected areas along the Route of Parks of Chilean Patagonia. Through communications campaigns we will raise awareness of the value of marine and coastal waters (a labyrinth of islands, fjords, and channels), and the threats they face. Chile hosts the world’s largest system of fjords, a biodiversity hot spot, but coastal marine protected areas presently cover only a small percentage of Patagonian waters within Chile’s Exclusive Economic Zone.