A Chilean environmental group recently made a deal to buy 325,000 acres, or roughly 508 square miles, of untouched wilderness in central Chile. According to The New York Times, the $63 million transaction will help preserve some of South America's most ecologically diverse land — and marks an unlikely partnership between two former adversaries.
The activist group, called Puelo Patagonia, previously sued the land's former owner Roberto Hagemann to block his plans to develop the land, encouraging him to sell.
The Times profile on the agreement called it a "case study in modern-day conservation."
Called Hacienda Pucheguin, the untouched land is almost entirely surrounded by national parks. It's also filled with wildlife — like pumas, endangered Andean deer, and Darwin's frogs — and natural biodiversity, including forests of endangered Alerce trees. Hacienda Pucheguin is also home to Cochamó Valley, towering granite cliffs popular among rock climbers. Cochamó Valley has been billed as the "Yosemite of South America" because of its similarity to California's popular national park.
"This is an irreplaceable place," Jeff Parrish, a senior executive at The Nature Conservancy, which is advising the nonprofit group on the purchase, told the Times. "We need to make sure that it stays the way nature intended it to be."
Hagemann, who made a fortune in mining and real estate, bought small pieces of land from individual ranching families to assemble Hacienda Pucheguin. Such a feat reportedly involved over 200 land deed transactions, per the Good News Network.
However, Hagemann's goal wasn't conservation. He wanted to develop the area for real estate and tourism but was met with resistance when proposing to build a hydroelectric power plant, 39 miles of power lines, and a network of roads in the area, as reported by the Times.
In 2013, longtime wilderness guide Rodrigo Condeza founded Puelo Patagonia to ensure that didn't happen. The group sued Hagemann for failing to undergo proper environmental reviews — and the courts agreed. After almost five years of legal battles, the courts squashed Hagemann's plans. So he decided to sell.
After listing the land for $150 million in 2018, no buyers emerged. So Puelo Patagonia decided to make a lowball offer in 2022.
"We are a bunch of hippies," Condeza told the Times. "We had no business doing this."
But Hagemann entertained the offer. In a meeting brokered by a lawyer, Hagemann told the activists that he, too, wanted to conserve the land, but he wanted to do so while creating economic value.
"Due to this meeting, a long process of mutual knowledge and respectful dialogue began that allowed us to reach mutual understanding and respect beyond our differences," Hagemann told the Times.
After a year of negotiations and some encouragement from Hagemann's rock-climbing son, the two sides reached a deal with a $63 million price tag. Hagemann even gave Puelo Patagonia two years to come up with the money.
Puelo Patagonia has already raised more than $15 million from two conservation charities, the Wyss Foundation and the Freyja Foundation. Puelo Patagonia also wants to raise an additional $15 million to build trails and manage tourists visiting Cochamó Valley.
"Everyone who cares about Cochamó was really scared about who was going to buy it," Condeza told the Times. "But we all got together and stopped fighting, and now we've made a solution to conserve it forever."
Preserving the land will protect an ecological corridor, allowing animals to roam freely through nearly 4,000 miles of wilderness. And it's all because of the tenacity and perseverance of local activists.
"This is the missing puzzle piece," Parrish told the Times. "Had it been developed, it would have bifurcated a bunch of protected areas."
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