Biocultural restoration and conservation at the southern end of the Americas

During the 1980s, conservation biologists successfully characterized the alarming losses of biodiversity and raised public awareness about the multiple human causes and problems associated with these losses. In the 1990s, it was recognized that greater integration between ecological and social dimensions was required to achieve conservation goals: ecological societies called for greater involvement of scientists with environmental decision-makers and educators; policy-makers, national and international government institutions elaborated environmental agreements signed by numerous countries. At the beginning of the 2000s, a central challenge that conservation biologists have to face is how to implement these discourses, and national-international environmental policies. In order to address this challenge, in 2000 we established a long-term biocultural conservation initiative in the remote and pristine sub-Antarctic region of southern South America, which has identified (a posteriori) ten guiding principles for its actions: (1) inter-institutional cooperation, (2) a participatory approach, (3) an interdisciplinary integration of environmental philosophy, sciences, arts, and policy, (4) networking and international cooperation, (5) communication through the media, (6) identification of flagship species, (7) outdoor formal and informal education, (8) economic sustainability and ecotourism, (9) administrative sustainability, and (10) research and “conceptual sustainability” for conservation. These principles have been effective to create the Omora Ethnobotanical Park, and the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve (designated by UNESCO in June 2005), which currently provides a long-term institutional-political framework to promote social well-being and biocultural conservation at the southernmost tip of the Americas.