We Are Wildlife helps threatened wildlife as well as underfunded conservation projects, especially those in Earth’s most resource-challenged regions. Given that it is a sensitive and urgent topic in most of Chilean and Argentine Patagonia, we wanted to jump right from the start into a collaboration with a robust Puma conservation project. That’s where we got to know what Fundación Cerro Guido is working on in the Torres del Paine region of Southern Chile.
We made a plan to go there during the winter, to start evaluating ways to cooperate with their efforts, so we did. We gladly met a multifaceted team of professionals from Fundación Cerro Guido, working to improve and enhance the relationship between traditional human settlements and local wildlife.
Estancia Cerro Guido has managed to keep their traditional cattle ranching activity going, while establishing a luxury lodge that includes full accommodations, high-end culinary offer, and also spectacular experiences like wildlife watching and overnights in remote and scenic Patagonian refuges. They also carry out research and conservationist actions within the Estancia and its surrounding areas. In that way, they aim to make the economic activity of tourism sustain the conservationist efforts overall. This is a well-known system of guaranteeing resources for conservation, and they seem to have everything in place for that to happen.
This way of combining traditional economic activities, eco-tourism and conservation, is a powerful example of how the world can change, and how natural environments and wildlife can perfectly coexist with humans. We had an amazing first encounter with an exceptional project, and of course we had exceptional experiences with thriving Pumas. We even saw Dark, the rare and elusive male who is supposed to be the dominant individual in the area.
