MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Non-flying birds relocated from Argentina to Chile where they neared extinction

Choiques are non-flying birds playing a key role in distributing seeds in their long-distance displacements

Conservationist groups from Chile and Argentina have undertaken a project to transfer 15 Patagonian rheas (also known as choiques) from Argentina’s Patagonia Park in Santa Cruz to Chile’s Patagonia National Park in the Aysén Region, in an initiative led by Rewilding organizations of both countries and supported by the Tompkins Conservation Foundation.

It is the first cross-border effort of its kind in the region to preserve emblematic species playing a key role in ecosystem regeneration by distributing seeds. In Chile, choiques came close to extinction due to overhunting, livestock overexploitation, and habitat destruction. Choiques are emblematic nonflying birds in South American Patagonia.

The project involves careful selection of rheas from a healthy population in Argentina to ensure minimal impact, Rewilding Argentina's Sebastián Di Martino explained. Rewilding Chile's Cristian Saucedo highlighted the lack of previous protocols for such transnational species recovery, noting that this effort could enhance institutional responses to the biodiversity crisis. Tompkins Conservation Kristine Tompkins defined the initiative as a historic milestone, emphasizing the power of international cooperation in combating mass extinction.

Mrs. Tompkins, a US philanthropist and former executive who, alongside her late husband Douglas, transitioned from business to conservation, now aims to “biologically reconnect” South America’s national parks across countries like Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, using rivers and the Andes as natural corridors in a continental-scale drive launched during a visit to Buenos Aires to address climate change and biodiversity loss.

Her foundation made up of conservationists and activists united by the commitment to recover natural ecosystems, respect for the intrinsic value of all species, and the dream of establishing models of development for rural communities in a context of coexistence with nature, has already engaged regional authorities, who have responded with enthusiasm.

With teams working on-site, these groups know the natural areas in depth to develop and implement conservation and restoration strategies for the benefit of their fauna and flora, their cultural values, and their people.

These birds are expected to regenerate the ecosystem, given their importance in the distribution of seeds during their long-distance displacements.

“We have decided to work on a continental scale,” explains Tompkins, 74, during a visit to Buenos Aires to launch her project “biologically reconnecting” Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay through the rivers, as if they were highways; and Chile with Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, through the Andes, he explained, with the certainty that his strategy will bear fruit in 25 years. Tompkins' initiative responds to the need to face the “speed of climate change” and its impact on the region.

Kristine Tompkins -executive director of the sustainably manufactured Patagonia clothing brand- and her late husband, Douglas Tompkins (1943-2015) -creator of the firms North Face and Esprit-, changed their business life 30 years ago for the protection and restoration of biodiversity in the Southern Cone by purchasing large portions of land and creating national parks in Chile and Argentina, which they then ceded to the States for conservation. The couple thus created Tompkins Conservation, now chaired by Kristine.

(See also: Renowned conservationist Doug Tompkins dies during kayak accident in Chilean Patagonia)