The Fuegian culpeo fox is an endemic subspecies that inhabits forests and coasts in the southernmost islands of Chile. It is the largest Chilean canidae and crossed to Tierra del Fuego about 10 thousand years ago, when the island was still connected to the continent.

Its population has been reduced by the intervention of poachers and the presence of introduced species. This is why it is considered a vulnerable species by the Chilean Ministry of the Environment and it is well noted that, should it disappear, its natural recovery would be very difficult.

Karukinka Park protects the largest extensions of the Fuegian culpeo fox habitat in the world. It is essential to restore and maintain healthy populations of the species and help understand its role in the functioning of the ecosystems of the island of Tierra del Fuego.

Peat bogs are the most extensive wetlands that exist on the planet. They have an enormous capacity to absorb CO₂, even greater than that of forests, which is why they play a key role in mitigating climate change.

Karukinka Park protects more than 30,000 hectares of peat bogs, the largest that exist in the entire Province of Tierra del Fuego, which today are protected by a decree established by the Chilean Ministry of Mining that declared them non-exploitable, given their gigantic scientific value.

However, their greatest environmental threat is the beaver invasion and their construction of dams that have been altering the water courses and landscapes, affecting the entire ecosystem. WCS works to recover the ecological water values ​​ and the carbon balance of Fuegian peat bogs.

Karukinka Park protects almost 130,000 hectares of primary forests containing up to 300-year-old lenga trees (Nothofagus pumilio), Magellanic coigüe (Nothofagus dombeyii), ñirre (Nothofagus antartica), canelo, michay (Berberis darwinii), calafate, diverse flowers, lichens, fungi and serves as habitat to a large part of the Fuegian fauna. These pristine forests are the most extensive and of highest density that exist in the world at this latitude.

These forests are threatened by forest fires caused – in most cases – by human negligence, and by beavers, which impact 98% of the rivers of Tierra del Fuego, altering more than 30,000 hectares of this native forest.

WCS Chile works on the restoration of the structure and dynamics of degraded mature forests, to help ensure that their ecological processes can function and thus provide key ecosystem services such as CO₂ uptake, soil formation, among others.

Karukinka Park contributes to the protection of key hydrological basins of Tierra del Fuego: the Rio Grande, the Cóndor River, the Sánchez River, the Azopardo River, the Paralelo River, among others. The water that drains in these basins sustains forests, wetlands, meadows, and feeds all the biodiversity contained in these Fuegian ecosystems.

However, the hydrology of Tierra del Fuego has undergone major changes with the advance of the beaver, which builds dams on water courses, flooding vast areas, drowning vegetation, stagnating as well as polluting waters.

Our goal is to restore the biodiversity associated with the water courses that flow in Karukinka Park and to recover its pristine character.