The new ecological disaster
Like rockets, burnt out tree trunks seem to shoot up from the ground, pointing for the cold, cloudy, grey sky. Devoid of all branches and greenery their charred remains are a ubiquitous feature of the Patagonian landscape.
Albeit many in number, each one seems separate, desolate and profoundly lonely. Their deadly solitude seems to tell individual stories of the torture this wilderness suffered at the hands of the first settlers.
Land clearance in the 40s and 50s was used to open up Patagonia to the wider world and the favoured method was fire. I ask the guide on the glacier tour about the tree trunks and she tells me about the first ecological disaster in this area of extraordinary natural beauty and of extraordinary ecological importance.
<<Prendieron fuego a todo el bosque pero se les fue de las manos.>> "They set fire to the forest to clear land but they couldn't control the fires once they started." The omnipresent, ferocious winds here in Patagonia must have fanned the flames, causing the flaming ashes to propagate the forest fire rapidly. Quite soon, it would have been impossible to manage. However, there are subtle signs of recovery. Although the tree trunks remain, vegetation has taken root around them. So, we can say it has taken more than half a century to begin to recover.
As we board the minibus to leave the Laguna San Rafael National Park, I spot an almost invisible plastic bag fluttering in the breeze. It has got stuck on a branch. <<allí, ¡hay una bolsa de plástico!>>, I exclaim. "There is a plastic bag over there!" The guide dives off the bus, picks up the bag and takes it back on the bus with us. <<¿Quién dijo eso?>> "Who said that?" Another guide asks. <<Matthew>>. She turns and looks at me. <<¡Tienes buen ojo!>> she says. "You've got a good eye!".
On the way back out of the park, we take a motorboat through a lake which has been created by the damming of the river two months earlier by a rockfall, which blocked the road by over one kilometre - boat is now the only way to traverse this area. Our guide expertly manouvres the boat in a chicane skirting the semi-submerged, charred tree trunks with a skilled ease. The dynamic landscape is already mending the visible mistakes we made in the past.
I am drawn to the semi-transparent plastic bag again, stuck on the brown-grey branch, fluttering in the breeze, with a seemingly inoffensive sterility. Perhaps, that is precisely the two-fold threat offered by the new ecological disaster; firstly its almost invisibility and secondly its sterility - at least the ash fed the landscape nutrients. And just like the fires, the plastic will spread much further than we ever thought possible; the same winds will ensure that. And to finish this post I should like to draw a striking similarity of this new ecological disaster to the first and that is its unprecedented scale - only this time around it will take much, much more than just half a century to fix.
(If you wondering why there aren't any photos of these rocket like, burnt out tree trunks, then read the post Theoretical Tourist Information.)
En la carretera Austral cerca de la desembocadura del Río Murta
Miércoles, el 26 de diciembre 2018
Albeit many in number, each one seems separate, desolate and profoundly lonely. Their deadly solitude seems to tell individual stories of the torture this wilderness suffered at the hands of the first settlers.
Land clearance in the 40s and 50s was used to open up Patagonia to the wider world and the favoured method was fire. I ask the guide on the glacier tour about the tree trunks and she tells me about the first ecological disaster in this area of extraordinary natural beauty and of extraordinary ecological importance.
<<Prendieron fuego a todo el bosque pero se les fue de las manos.>> "They set fire to the forest to clear land but they couldn't control the fires once they started." The omnipresent, ferocious winds here in Patagonia must have fanned the flames, causing the flaming ashes to propagate the forest fire rapidly. Quite soon, it would have been impossible to manage. However, there are subtle signs of recovery. Although the tree trunks remain, vegetation has taken root around them. So, we can say it has taken more than half a century to begin to recover.
As we board the minibus to leave the Laguna San Rafael National Park, I spot an almost invisible plastic bag fluttering in the breeze. It has got stuck on a branch. <<allí, ¡hay una bolsa de plástico!>>, I exclaim. "There is a plastic bag over there!" The guide dives off the bus, picks up the bag and takes it back on the bus with us. <<¿Quién dijo eso?>> "Who said that?" Another guide asks. <<Matthew>>. She turns and looks at me. <<¡Tienes buen ojo!>> she says. "You've got a good eye!".
On the way back out of the park, we take a motorboat through a lake which has been created by the damming of the river two months earlier by a rockfall, which blocked the road by over one kilometre - boat is now the only way to traverse this area. Our guide expertly manouvres the boat in a chicane skirting the semi-submerged, charred tree trunks with a skilled ease. The dynamic landscape is already mending the visible mistakes we made in the past.
I am drawn to the semi-transparent plastic bag again, stuck on the brown-grey branch, fluttering in the breeze, with a seemingly inoffensive sterility. Perhaps, that is precisely the two-fold threat offered by the new ecological disaster; firstly its almost invisibility and secondly its sterility - at least the ash fed the landscape nutrients. And just like the fires, the plastic will spread much further than we ever thought possible; the same winds will ensure that. And to finish this post I should like to draw a striking similarity of this new ecological disaster to the first and that is its unprecedented scale - only this time around it will take much, much more than just half a century to fix.
(If you wondering why there aren't any photos of these rocket like, burnt out tree trunks, then read the post Theoretical Tourist Information.)
En la carretera Austral cerca de la desembocadura del Río Murta
Miércoles, el 26 de diciembre 2018
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