The history of the defending and conserving Cochamó Valley goes back decades of diverse efforts. One of the biggest challenges dates back to 2009, when the non-governmental citizen group Conservación Cochamó (2009-2012) was created to confront a hydroelectric project that wanted to exploit the Cochamó Valley and its main tributaries. The organization, together with the community, achieved a reserve of Cochamó's River and all its tributaries for conservation and local use by presidential decree during the first term of the Bachelet administration.
Aun así, las amenazas al río Cochamó y Puelo nunca dejaron de cesar. Grandes empresarios con afanes inmobiliarios y con proyectos de centrales hidroeléctricas siguen hasta el día de hoy tratando de intervenir estos lugares de belleza única y con un alto valor de conservación. En el Valle Cochamó hay 8 mil hectáreas de Alerce, especies endémicas, tanto de flora y fauna, como la ranita de Darwin, vizcachas patagónicas, pumas y otras especies típicas del bosque templado o selva Valdiviana.
That is why, in 2017, the same people from Conservación Cochamó, members of Puelo Patagonia and new actors, owners, tour operators, friends and foreign collaborators to create the Organización Valle Cochamó, with the objective of developing responsible and sustainable tourism, creating a protected, collaborative and voluntary area for the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of this international destination. Also in the U.S., another organization was formed, Friends of Cochamó, by a group of international climbers that frequented the area and wished to help with efforts of conservation.
The efforts required are enormous, both human and financial, especially when the threats of the construction of a road (by the same businessmen who destroyed the forest in the Manso) to the valley are getting closer and closer.
This place is known as the Yosemite of South America. It is a comparison that is light years away from what is being done and preserved here. It is exactly what we do not want to become. Just imagine Cochamó Valley transformed into hectors of parking lots.
Today, with the pandemic upon us, it has been more than demonstrated that the only thing we need is to leave nature alone and help in its restoration and conservation, especially in places as pristine as the Cochamó Valley and its ancestral gaucho culture. With a road, the guachos livelihood is finished, the end of a deep cultural root and the beginning of an ecological catastrophe.
That is why we need your help in the protection of this place. We are all responsible to continue having a free, healthy and preserved Cochamó Valley for future generations.
