Gondwana Forest Sanctuary

Ancient Araucaria forests in the Cani Forest Sanctuary, Chile's first privately-owned forest preserve. Photo: Phil Knight/NFN

The Gondwana Forest Sanctuary: Preserving Earth’s Southernmost Forests (.pdf)
This 4-page pdf document gives a brief overview of the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Campaign and provides contacts around the world.

Mission Statement

To protect, reconnect and restore the life of Gondwana by creating an international sanctuary of Earth's southernmost forests.

Philosophy

No major civilization has flourished following the destruction of its primary forests. The forests that originated on Gondwana constitute the oldest and most unique temperate ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere. In this era of economic globalization, the concept of a global commons as reflected in the Antarctica World Park needs to be expanded to protect Gondwana's far-flung surviving forests. With the millennium upon us, now is the time for a new era in international forest protection. The Gondwana Forest Sanctuary provides local, national and international communities with a new model for the way humans relate to the land.

Area of Concern

The Gondwannic forests are found in portions of South America, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. In South America, the forests occur in south-central Chile and in all of Patagonia, straddling both the Chilean and Argentinian side of the Andes from the 37th Parallel south to Tierra del Fuego. These regions contain the major Gondwannic genii and species: Nothofagus (southern beech), Alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides) and Araucaria (Araucaria araucana). There are 8 nothofagus species found in Chile and Argentina including Ruil, Roble, Rauli, Lenga, Hualo, Coihue, Magellanic Coihue, and Nirre.

Gondwannic forests grow extensively on the South Island of New Zealand and in small portions of the North Island. In Australia, the island state of Tasmania hosts the largest extent of Gondwannic forests, while significant remnants are found on the mainland in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Australia has a long Gondwanic history strectching back over 200 million years. Three species of Nothofagus stretch down the Eastern Seaboard, commencing with the Antarctic beech (N. moorei), found in southern Queensland and sub tropical New South Wales, to the Myrtle beech (N. cunninghamii) in Victoria and Tasmania, and Australia's only decidous tree, the Tasmanian Deciduous beech (N. gunnii). These forests remain threatened by land clearing (Qld, NSW) and clearfelling for woodchips (Vic. TAS). Australia's critical threatened Gondawana forests include the Tarkine (Australia's largest temperate rainforest at ca. 300,000 ha.) and other areas in Tasmania (by NORTH and BORAL), and in Victoria the Otway (logging for Kimberly Clark Australia) and Strezlecki Ranges (logging by AMCOR and by John Hancock for plantation establishment). Other forests with Gondwannic flora, such as East Gippsland (Vic.), are also being sytematically destroyed for woodchip exports to Japanese paper companies including Mitsubishi and Daishowa.

The islands of New Guinea, New Caledonia and New Britain also contain significant and diverse Gondwannic vegetation.

Project Description

The first goal of the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Campaign is to protect the remaining primary forests in Tierra del Fuego, comprising the southernmost forests on Earth, in both Chile and Argentina. (See Action Alert on Tierra del Fuego Adopt a Tree). These sub-antarctic forests are currently threatened by the $200 million Rio Condor logging project initiated by the U.S. based Trillium Corp. Composed of 360,000 hectares of ancient lenga forest (nothofagus pumilio), a wide-ranging, well-adapted deciduous southern beech tree, this boreal forest region is highly fragile. A portion of it is recognized as Magellanic Rainforest. It is the intention of the Gondwana Campaign to begin the process of creating an international system of inter-continental forest reserves starting at the tip of South America and spreading northward and outward. (See Appendix A - Proyecto Lemu's Trans-Andean Wildlands Complex).

The project components include:

1. Preparing a comprehensive bi-national forest preservation and land use plan for Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of South America. This effort will bring together an interdisciplinary team composed of ecologists and economists, anthropologists and archeologists, foresters and geologists, biologists and botanists, appropriate technology/permaculture consultants and local representatives. Its purpose is to teach and guide communities away from large-scale industrial development projects like Rio Condor and other unsustainable economic and trade policies which promote export of unfinished resources.
   
   The plan will encourage and foster community employment and self-sufficiency via organic farming/ranching, manufacturing of high-quality, value added wood products from secondary forests, increasing tourism and related visitor services (particularly ecotourism), administration and management of parks, protected forest reserves and culturally important areas. Finally, the plan will propose future options for regional economies of scale, national conservation strategies and international environmental agreements.
   
   
2. Developing a series of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) maps displaying the amount of primary forest in Tierra del Fuego, the representative floral and faunal communities and other relevant bio-geographic information. The maps will help to integrate the principles of conservation biology into the Tierra del Fuego forest preservation and land use plan. These maps will also serve as the building blocks for a Gondwannic "Wildlands Project" map encompassing all of Patagonia and eventually extending to Gondwannic forests on other islands, countries and continents.
   
   
3. Launching an array of political steps focused on creating an international environmental agreement within temperate forest countries to end logging and other industrial activities inside primary forests. This component will explore opportunities within the realm of the United Nations (UNESCO-World Heritage/Biosphere Reserves; UNEP); U.S. Agency for International Development and other interested U.S governmental agencies; and respective national governments in Gondwana countries including but not limited to Argentina, Chile, New Zealand and Australia. Another aspect of this work is to continue to monitor the impacts on forests from various economic and trade policies being promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO); Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC); and the Free Trade of the Americas Summit. Masked in such language as "Early Voluntary Sector Liberalization" (EVSL) and stemming from U.S. efforts to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into South America through fast-track legislation, these trade accords represent a direct threat to both Gondwana's primary forests and to long-term community prosperity and stability for local people. Thus the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary Campaign will seek to influence these international economic bodies by offering an alternative, sustainable economic and ecological model.
   
   
4. The "Gondwana Foundation" has been established to foster continuity in stewarding the first - and subsequent - forests to be protected by the Gondwana Campaign. The foundation will administer and direct the various working groups in charge of managing the respective sanctuaries, investing and disbursing the endowment funds, and overseeing the development of the international Gondwana Forest Sanctuary System. Due to the differences in land ownership (governmental vs. private) between Argentina and Chile, it is vital to establish a decision-making body that can balance private acquisition and governmental efforts. Presently, the most pressing need is to acquire the two Trillium holdings in (350,000 has.) in Tierra del Fuego. Efforts are also underway to create a "Trans-Andean Wildlands Complex", potentially one of the world's largest protected areas (5,000,000 has.), 1,000 miles to the North, spanning the provinces of Neuquin, Rio Negro and Chubut in Argentina and the Lake District, Valdivian and North Patagonian regions in Chile. The foundation will be initially directed by involved Argentinian, Chilean and international forest activists, adding a director from each country eventually represented in this worldwide effort.