Jaime´s favorite tree is the Alerce

True to form, we started our day off at 7:30 because we had to catch the 8:00am ferry ¨Don Fernando¨ to head to La Reserva Costera Valdiviana. This reserve is a collaboration between The Nature Conservancy, The World Wildlife Fund, and the Chaihuin community. Upon arrival at the reserve, we were given a presentation by Damilo, who has been the park guard for 3 1/2 years. He talked about how the forestry in the area started in 1850, which has subsequently caused loss of some species and the community was beginning to worry about losing the Alerce trees. The main reason for international conservation´s concern about this area was due to a loss of species due to land conversion to plantations. In November 2003, all of the aforementioned international groups and the community purchased the land to create a reserve. La Reserva Costera Valdiviana encompasses 60,000 hectares and the creation of this area has changed the mindset of the local community towards that of conservation. The main point of the reserve is to support the scientific community. Only people of the nearby town can be used as guides, so this also supports community involvement and tourism.
Christian Little, a doctoral candidate and forest engineer from the Univeristy of Austral spoke next. He discussed the idea that reduction of precipitation and change in land cover will ultimately change the drinking water yield.
In his study, he found less precipitation changes and percentage of run off resulted in less water changes in native forests. After his presentation, we went out into the forest to look at his field sites firsthand. He created weirs to check how much water is flowing out of the weir at a given stage.

Afterwards, we got to see some huge Alerce trees that were at least 2000 years old!
As the onceler once said, "those trees, those trees, those Truffula trees, all my life I´ve been searching for trees such as these". Unlike the Onceler, our intentions were to view the Alerce trees not harvest them. These magnificent trees that are lifetimes old and have survived so much. Although Will insisted he´d seen bigger, they impressed us all.
We reloaded the bus to catch the ferry and Michelle asked Jaime what his favorite tree was. Forgetting himself, Jaime answered the Alerce. Where all week we´ve been hearing "Viva Radiata Pine". At least today, we would not have gotten an argument when we say,
"Viva Alerce!"

Ciao,
Blake and Katie