Hiking out of the coigue forest, the Mosco Valley opens in all its fall splendor. Photo by Shalynn Pack.
By Cormac Quinn, of the College of Saint Benedict | Saint John’s University
The Mosco Valley has it all. At its head, tucked away at the end of a narrow gorge, is the Mosco glacier, feeding a river whose torrent frequently breaks its barriers, leaving the forest floor in its wake after charging through a desolate floodplain with only the tops of trees breaching through the layers of sediment and rock. The valley walls are held in place by a patchy forest of old and young growth trees in a constant cycle of renewal, battling against the intense winds and encroaching currents on a perpetually eroding slope. The barren mountain tops begin their ascent as recently unglaciated boulders start their procession through succession – how a natural landscape transitions from grasses and shrubs into a thick canopy forest through competition over time. This hidden vestige of the natural world is home to a population of huemules (Hippocamelus bisulcus), an endangered species dear to Chileans and their montane ecosystem.
This glacial valley is protected under a unique system, wherein the local municipality, Villa O’Higgins, has complete control over its management. When the Bien Nacional Protegido (BNP) was established, park rangers conducted a first analysis of the natural bird and plant species, with only minor attention to the huemul. There has been a rising interest from the government to protect them, an innocent, friendly creature featured on the Chilean coat of arms, and this month, the mayor gave his permission and blessing to Round River to conduct their first natural survey of the area. This would be the first major census of the local huemul population since the Park was created over a decade ago. The task that lay ahead was unfamiliar territory in a physical sense, but became all too familiar once we got started. It was the natural fruition of the semester, a synthesis of the academic and physical skills garnered that fit the expectations we had for field research before arriving in Chile.
Students hike down a steep mountainside after searching for huemules in the alpine zone, with an excellent view of the Mosco Valley below. Photo by Shalynn Pack.
The expedition would be as long as Cape Froward, with protocols we’d gained only a taste of in Tamango, and a synthesis of our readings on huemul and human interaction with the environment we’d studied throughout the semester. Our hikes, which were typically geared toward learning about our environment, now were scientific evaluations of all that we saw and heard. We divided ourselves into groups tasked with a certain aspect of field data collection – plants, huemul signs, birds, amphibians, and spatial data – and distributed ourselves throughout the marching order. We kept our noise disturbance to a minimum for better chance at spotting a huemul, resorting to hand signals to communicate a sighting or end of a transect. To ensure uniformity, every 250 meters we stopped to input data for that transect, indicated by a raised fist that cascaded from the front, where the GPS was, to the back.
At the head of the line was our navigation specialist, documenting the altitude and position of our hike at the end of every transect. Huemul spotters followed close behind, keeping their eyes peeled for any signs of huemul presence, generally through tracks and scat. The birders listened closely to any call carried on the breeze through the forest, often burying their beaks in a bird book to clarify the species. Lastly, the plant team registered each plant found within the park to create a master list; taking the rear of the contingency because, well, plants wouldn’t run away. We all had the ability to operate each role, and thusly assisted each other to identify tracks, point out new plants, repeat a bird call, or operate the GPS.
Transect Observations. Photo by Shalynn Pack.
The first day, we walked up the mountainside looking over Villa O’Higgins, and hiked along the trail for 7km, paralleling and climbing above the roaring Mosco River, gray with glacial sediment. We camped the nexy four nights at the refugío, exchanging our findings from that day with one another. Although we lacked the same academic prowess as our instructors, the data collection was done by the students, so we educated each other on what we had found and our assumptions behind it. It felt intrinsic, we could hardly hear a bird call without identifying it, and conveying that information to the rest of our team was our version of small-talk. We spoke a specific language, centered around the nature that rose around us, that dominated the last two months of our lives. Never again will I see people so excited about finding piles of poop.
A thorn-tailed rayadito (Aphrastura spinicauda) stares down the student photographer, Sierra Lammi, as we walk through his heavily-guarded territory.
The expedition split into two groups for three full days to cover more area within the park, and transect a greater diversity of habitats in search of huemul. This meant a student would cover a certain aspect by themselves, except for huemul spotters, given their priority in this expedition. But, we seemed more excited than overwhelmed by the opportunity, confident enough to take on the responsibility. Blending work with pleasure, the hikes took us across floodplains and up mountains, bushwhacking through areas likely never crossed by naturalists before. This was what we expected from field research, as tiring as it was.
The initial trek passed through areas that were once old-growth forests, and then were burned and cleared for agriculture. These areas recently released from the yoke of agriculture, followed two general patterns depending on how it was used: either a burn followed by natural succession, or by cattle grazing. Firstly, fields that were cattle grazed suffered from soil compaction over years of bovines battering their hooves in their conquest for food. What they left behind deposited useful nutrients like nitrogen, that would benefit only the area within the radius of the cow-pie; or, be unable to penetrate the hard surface, and wash away with the rains. When the forest tries to reclaim these areas, opportunistic colonizers establish themselves first, choking out the saplings or using the available nutrients. Dense shrubs made these areas difficult to traverse, and hard to identify the level of biodiversity after the first few meters.
Photo by Shalynn Pack.
The other fate the forest can follow is being allowed to regrow without much interference after a burn. Most agricultural areas were cleared by burning, a once widespread practice during the government’s initial push to populate the areas, now deemed illegal throughout Chile. These fires could climb the mountainsides, areas the rancher didn’t desire because of how steep or rocky they were, and obvious to this day as bald streaks across the aging forest. Decades after the burn, young coigüe (Nothofagus spp.) trees fill the hillside and deprive light to the understory through a blanketing canopy. The forest floor was covered in broken branches, and the lack of lighting gave an ominous glow that dissipated quickly into the darkening forest.
Hiking upslope, we suddenly are gifted with this stunning view of a hidden waterfall on the Río Claro. Photo by Shalynn Pack.
As the expedition marched past the scars of human intervention, we were dwarfed by the immense power of the natural processes. Trees wider than our wingspans and taller than our field of vision sprinkled across a green field of cushy moss and colorful lichen. Without any shrubs or small trees, the allure of the open expanse was only hindered by the reality of how far we sank into the thick moss coating without finding the ground. These wooden obelisks filled the sky with their leaves, but their height gave way for light to create a green glow in this land without shadows. This was the climax of succession, how the forest is “supposed to be;” but, nature always has other plans.
Patches of these behemoths lay strewn across the ground, log over log, having succumbed to a gust of wind that was just strong enough. Shrubs are already popping their heads out from behind a log, benefiting from the shade and moisture retention in a microclimate surrounding the recently deceased giant. Groundcover begins stretching its tendrils over the trunks, reaping the nutrients stored within. Upon first glance, these graveyards might seem sad, the failure of such a longstanding patch of woods. But, among the corpses of cellulose, new life springs forward, and the race to the top begins anew.
The forest patches overtake the Mosco hillsides. Photo by Sierra Lammi.
We pieced together these conclusions about the history from the amalgamation of information we’d collected over the semester. The stockpile of plant identities we’d compiled provided knowledge about the specifics of our surroundings, Latin names that may never play a role in our lives after leaving Chile. But, because we knew the environments they prefer, and their methods of seed dispersal, we could begin to build a story behind the plant’s introduction. With similar genus names, we knew which plants created fruiting bodies, that could entice huemul to the area for foraging. Noticing the disturbances to the grasses and natural order of succession indicated movement through the area from some animal.
When we first arrived in Chile, we struggled to push past the confusing names of the woody shrubs that flanked our every movement. Bird calls felt more foreign that Spanish, and habitats were overwhelmingly simplified to “wet forest.” In the beginning stages, our desire to overcome the environment around us was limited by the slow progression of time. Now, after what felt like the blink of an eye, we’ve broken through the canopy to see the world more clearly from above. It was an unexpected change, watching the grass grow until suddenly we were immersed in a field of understanding.
It was the culmination of what we expected from field research; but, we were glad we didn’t jump in headfirst from the beginning. The time spent base camping, studying the natural history of Patagonia through academic papers and staff presentations paid off. If someone provided us with an area and objective of study, I’m confident the student researchers of Round River could create the proper protocols, prepare the necessary equipment, and complete the expedition. We have finally pushed past the brush and now our canopies encompass a swathe of natural history, now best prepared to conserve the local biology. With only a month left, we have plenty of data collection to continue; but, soon the cycle will reset, and a new era of naturalists will be fostered by the Chilean landscape.
Our Team Delfín enjoys a rainbow over the Mosco River on the last day of our surveys. Photo by Shalynn Pack.