Ecotourism Takes Root in Argentina's Patagonia
8/25/99
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Title: Ecotourism takes root in Argentina's Patagonia
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 25, 1999
Byline: Gilbert Le Gras
PUERTO MADRYN - This wind-swept Patagonian desert port is turning into
fertile ground for more than tumbleweed as eco-tourism spreads from
whale watching to inland tours of a petrified forest and a new
dinosaur museum.
What was a sleepy Patagonian town of 20,000 a generation ago has
blossomed to more than 45,000 residents living by the Valdes Peninsula
- one of the world's top marine reserves.
Fishing is still an important employer and four packing plants line
the northeastern shore of the deep-water port, but Puerto Madryn has
found another vocation for its geography.
"In 1972 we had seven people come here to see the whales. Last year we
had about 90,000 tourists," private tour operator Jorge Schmid said.
He started Punta Ballena touring company more than 20 years ago and
now commands a fleet of six ships that shuttle busloads of tourists
daily to watch killer whales and southern right whales frolicking near
the coastline.
"People are more interested in eco-tourism now. Until the 1990s it was
strictly foreigners: Spaniards, Italians who have family in Argentina,
many Germans and Swiss. Since the beginning of the '90s there's been a
lot of Argentine students," Schmid said.
The number of tourists coming to Argentina rose 54 percent between
1990 and 1998 to 3 million foreigners who spent $3.21 billion last
year, a recent government report said.
"This is one of the best places in the world to study southern right
whales," Fundacion Patagonia Natural president Guillermo Harris said.
"The world's population of southern right whales is about 7,000 and
there are 2,500 who come to breed and calve in the Valdes Peninsula."
SOUTH AMERICA'S ONLY ELEPHANT SEAL COLONY
Tourists and scientists are also attracted to the only point on the
South American continent to host a colony of 7,500-pound (3,000-kg)
elephant seals on the peninsula's Punta Delgada, not to mention
Magellanic penguins, sea lions and sea birds.
Isla de los Pajaros not only boasts an array of gulls, cormorants,
flamingos and oystercatchers but also a place in literary history. The
hat-shaped island inspired French pilot-author Antoine de Saint-
Exupery's boa that swallowed an elephant in the classic novel "Le
Petit Prince," Hugo Lemos, a local tour guide, said.
Saint-Exupery used to fly from nearby Trelew, Lewis' Town in the
native Welsh of the town's founders, to Buenos Aires.
"I've been doing this for 15 years and every year more and more people
come here," Lemos said as his tour bus rattled along a dirt road
carved on the sun-bleached tan desert shrubs against the South
Atlantic deep blue.
"November's the best time to come because you can see everything:
whales, seals, penguins," Lemos added.
Further inland, it is possible to see small herds of grazing guanacos,
a smaller and rarer member of the llama family, as well as wild foxes
and wild rabbits.
PETRIFIED TREES DATE BACK 58 MILLION YEARS
Some 95 miles (155 km) west of Puerto Madryn, deep into the heart of
the ancient Chubut River Valley, rise mesas that were islands in a
much wider river millions of years ago. Just below the surface on the
edge of one of the volcanic rock formations is a petrified forest
discovered only weeks ago, with at least 37 trees measuring up to
60 feet (20 meters) uncovered so far.
"These petrified trees are 58 million years old. They were deposited
here when the river was much wider and the climate of Patagonia was
very different," said Martin Cardoso, a geology student from the
Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia.
He and three other students excavating there break to give guided
tours of the dig. The site is so new geologists needed the rancher's
permission to dig while a law is being drafted to declare the area a
national historic site.
The Patagonian desert, once was a tropical jungle, is also rich in
dinosaur fossils. The Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio opened June
25 in nearby Trelew and showcases 30 dinosaur skeletons unearthed in
Argentina.
All told, some 5,000 fossilized bones are on display at the museum
where visitors can watch paleontologists reconstruct dinosaur bones,
follow a guided tour of the collection or watch an hour-long film on
the dinosaur age.
c 1999 Reuters Limited.