This is Last Wild Places, a Patagon Journal podcast where adventurers, conservationists, and other inspiring guests share their stories about nature's last frontiers. Hello everybody, thanks for joining us for another episode of Last Wild Places. This is Lily Ulford. I'm Jimmy Langman, the executive editor of Patagon Journal.
We are excited to speak today of Dr. Pablo García Borboroglu, President and co-founder of the Global Penguin Society, and a recent winner of the prestigious Indianapolis prize, also called the Nobel Prize for Animal Conservation.
Later in the worldwide movement to protect penguins, Pablo was a marine biologist working at a border margin on the southern Patagonia coast of Argentina, where he does research about sea birds and penguins for Argentina's National Research Council, and is also a professor for the University of Washington. He also designs marine protected areas and among his projects include helping set up the UNESCO Patagonia Azul Biasphere Reserve, which protects 20 penguin colonies in Argentina.
Pablo joins us after recently completing fieldwork on the southernmost tip of Chilean Patagonia to share his vast knowledge about penguins and the biggest threat facing the species today, as well as what his organisation is doing to secure their future. Each episode we also talked to the writers of each issue of the Patagon Journal to get a deeper perspective on their stories.
Today's backstory is with Rodrigo Barria about his article, Megafires and Forestry Industry in Chile, the trees that fan the fire from issue 27. We hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, Pablo. Welcome to the last wild places podcast of Patagon Journal. We're very honored to have you with us. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved with Patagonia and penguins. What led you to your path?
Perfect. My grandfather was Greek and they came to Patagonia, the southern part in this part of Argentina over 100 years ago and my grandmother used to go to visit penguins along the coast of Patagonia. In those years they were still killing cilayos and elephants and harvesting whales to produce fat and other products.
Egotrism didn't exist back then and my grandmother was going with horses to the wagons to these places and then when I was a small boy she used to tell me these amazing stories about her visits to see the penguins and of course for me they were very remote stories.
I was two, three years old and she was telling me about how the adults would fiercely protect the chicks from predators, you know they have puma and foxes and marilos and scams but also how they would go into the ocean and swim, you know come back and feed the chicks. So that was my first connection to nature through the penguins and that's why I said that it was my grandmother, the person that connected me to nature and somehow why I'm dedicated my life to protect penguins and the oceans.
Throughout your career was it always this love of penguins which remained kind of steadfast? So at the beginning I was not that kind of person like other colleagues that always knew that they wanted to be a biologist that was not me at the beginning, you know I had this connection to nature and I would go with her and also my mother you know to enjoy birds
and animals but I wanted to be an ambassador at the beginning so I studied laws for a couple of years and some languages and then when I came to Patagonia because I was born in a coastal town that a little bit further north in Argentina and then in those years
which were the 80s I was shocked because 40,000 penguins were dying per year due to oil spills so it was very common to go to the coast and see you know their penguins, oil or dying so I was collecting them and rehabilitating them and that helped me to reconnect again with
the penguins and then I decided to after there was a very big oil spilling in 1991 and 17,000 penguins died in only two months here so I set up a rehabilitation center but after that I realized that I had to get more tools you know to train myself to be more efficient for penguins and that's how I started an academic career and since then I've been working for so far for 35 years to payment research but research that is useful for conservation.
And issue of Patagon journal a couple years ago I interviewed D. Boris Ma who is also a scientist studying penguins in Argentina, Patagonia Argentina. She has you've done some work with her right did you and her work together on some of these things and starting the global penguin society is that correct?
Yeah exactly so yeah we interact a lot you know the penguin community is not that big so we know we have the international penguin congresses and there are 350 people so we know each other very well and we interact a lot we do a lot of collaborations and I've been
working in the past with D a lot and yeah and in those years in the early 90s I met it also to have information about how to rehabilitate penguins and then of course as I was growing my career in more the academic because this more into the academic part and we were interacting
a lot of course and together we created the also the IUC and penguin specialist group which is like very useful in part to decide assess the start the conservation status of all the penguins on the planet but also to identify what are the problems the solutions and this group has also inflict on national and international policy for penguins and the options. So you've been working on these issues for a long time have you seen progress in the protection
of penguins in these years? Yes yes so I've been working so first of all I was more focused on an academic career so I became a biologist and then I finished my PhD but I continued publishing but at some point I realized that of course science is extremely necessary but it is not sufficient to fix conservation problems and because conservation problems are more related to
other things that are not necessarily linked exclusively to science. Science is important to inform decision-making to identify what are the problems to provide the solutions but I needed to do something else with that science because normally you publish and in Argentina
people speak Spanish and we are supposed to publish in English in international journals decision-makers here the Dolbyd English they don't have access to those journals so I decided to create some of the groups and that's how the Global Permanence Society was born which is an
international organization that promotes the protection of all the penguins species on the planet through science, protection of habitat and also education and of course that expanded the dimension of our work because it was not only doing science it was doing science to guide
conservation to create protected areas so far we've been able to protect 32 million acres of habitat for penguins to do management plans for activities that overlap with penguins distribution could be oil industries could be fisheries it could be we do management plans for colonies that
are open to tourists but we also have a huge education program and where for example we take kids that live close to penguins to visit them for the first time because we see that some in many cases penguins people that live close to penguins they have less information that
other people in big cities in the United States for example and those these kids and the ones that will decide about the future of these penguins so we have seen I've seen the damage that people can cause to penguins but also the great impact of conservation actions for example I mentioned
before that in the 80s 40,000 penguins died per year due to oil spills but then oil tanker lanes were moved further offshore and with the technology that allowed the early detection of oil spills the oil spills were drastically reduced and from those 40,000 that were dying now we don't have
more than 15, 20 individuals dying so that's a great conservation stories in which not only governments were involved but also the private sectors and then we have cases in which we were able to discover new colonies settled down settling down but they sometimes when we settle down
places that are really impacted by human disturbance for example we have a case in which there were people a reckless people throwing garbage setting bushes on fire to make varicose you know burning the bushes where penguins were nesting taking dogs hunting and then
slowly working with the people trying to protect those penguins we were able to secure the place for the penguins and like this colony that I'm talking about was we discovered 15 years ago and it had only six pairs of penguins that were severely threatened and now the colonies had
more than 4,000 pairs and we were able to work with the land owners to set up a ecotristic operation generating jobs for local people and a lot of opportunities for education and also for science so now people perceive that it's much better to protect those penguins than to have a group of reckless people destroying everything and enjoying the the place for
only an afternoon. And to stop the thread of oil supposed did you that's partly an activist approach too you have to get involved with lobbying and working with other environmental NGOs? Yes absolutely so sometimes we have a good combination because when you are a scientist you have a scientific credentials that allows you to you have credibility but you we needed to create the global penguins society to have like a policy arm you know we needed to have like a conservation
arm and through the global penguins society we were able to interact with decision makers with the media with a lot of you know private sectors to convince them about the need to do conservation action or some changes and we work a lot in collaboration with many
colleagues and also with many other NGOs you know because some challenges are really really big and right now we are also working together to try to minimize the or stop in some cases the huge development plans all there's a huge all development plans for the coastal coastal part
of Argentina throughout the continental all the continental shelf and of course it's a it's a long process you know but the key thing is that to realize that when you work in conservation you work to change the behavior of people we cannot change the behavior of penguins you know so the more
I work then the less time I share with penguins I reread that but we need to change the behavior of people of decision makers we meet decision makers we translate this scientific information in a friendly way not only to decision makers but also to communities because communities have
been fantastic to support the actions that we want to create and of course they're going to be the people enjoying the protected areas so they have to be in front of a wide those rules exist and in many cases since we conduct a lot of participatory processes since they invest a lot of
time and energy in those processes then they want the rules to be followed and they are the ones demanding the governments to follow the rules of the of those management plans and of those regulations so we have this kind of multi-saltor sectoral approach that has been very very useful so far
when we were talking about the local communities I know that in the past I'd never thought to imagine penguins sharing a space with humans are always kind of showed in the media is very very remote and so how do you work with that engagement of local communities when they share a home with the
penguins yeah so what we see now is that of course because their human population is increasing and also because people have access to vehicles like ATVs or four wheel drive they have access to places that were pristine for centuries and they were protected because nobody could go to
these places but now they can and we see a lot of more interaction not always positive so when we were with the communities sometimes let's say that you want to protect create a protected area so you work through the media you work with the governments it's like a
you make like an organized orchestrated approach you know so we were with the media to inform people about what we're doing we conduct this participatory processes where we invite all the sectors that can be influenced by the changing in the management of a colony for example but of course sometimes
you work with communities like say like Antarctica in Antarctica you don't have cities you don't have communities it is the international community so the approach is very different through international media you know and sometimes when you're working by issues not coastal it's very remote for people they don't get to understand what you're protecting because they don't get to see this part of the ocean that is protected so we design the communication messaging in a way that people can
grasp that can understand the importance of that but more importantly people have a natural emotional connection to families and we capitalize on that because when we protect families we protect vast areas of the oceans that they are using and through the protection of families we
protect hundreds and thousands of other species that coexist with families in many cases we don't even know what are those species in some cases we don't know enough about them and or people maybe don't care as much as they care about charismatic a charismatic bird like a penguin
so we capitalize on on that as well and of course we also use the face of penguins to create protected areas so it's not just about the penguin it's about the water it's about the coast and it's about all the hundreds of species that the penguins coexist with are you seeing in Argentina and other countries where there are penguins that communities are starting to value and and want to protect the existence of these penguins more than in the
the 90s when you first started out? Yes definitely and I think there's been different factors I think that have determined this what is the maybe social media or more communication you know now people have more access to communication so you have the chance to reach those communities
but on the other hand I'm really hopeful because I see in the young generations that they have a conservation awareness in their DNA you know when I'm 55 when I was 10 it was only my grandmother that was telling me about animals you know it was not on school we didn't have anybody at school
talking to us about conservation or wildlife it wasn't like now and now everybody like all the young generations they do know they're concerned they know a lot and they really make things like in their diets in the way they behave in their the way they consume articles they're really aware
of what they can consume and I see that it's a positive change a positive shift in the cultural in a cultural dimension so I see that of course there are many bad news in conservation arena but we also need to highlight what's the positives and there's been a cultural change in terms of
of conservation globally I would say of course there's sectors and people they will always be people that they don't we don't agree with but I see more and more people and I'm happy because this young generation soon they will become more part of the population on the planet and they will
vote for representatives that will will be making decisions based on the environment. What are the main threats to penguin and I realize the threats probably different depending on where the penguins are but what are some of the common threats to penguins I'm actually obviously climate change is probably the biggest but explain a little bit more about what the threats are to penguins.
Yeah so if you look at them at the landscape of all the penguins there are 18 different species of penguins they only live in the southern hemisphere and half of them are considered threatened according to the red list of a UCN and this is because penguins accumulate threats in the ocean
and on land if you talk about an animal that is exclusively marine like a dolphin they only face threats in the ocean but penguins coexist on land and in the ocean and that is nice but it's also a problem in terms of conservation in the ocean they are affected by the bad management of commercial
fisheries sometimes fisheries they compete with penguins because they they're fishing close to the places where penguins are eating and sometimes they kill penguins because penguins get in tangled fishing nets during the fishing operations oil spills as I mentioned was also a problem
and now it's also plastic pollution penguins can get in tangled in big pieces of plastic or solo species of plastic that can harm them and sometimes kill them and when penguins also come on land they are affected by human disturbance in many places and also by the introduction of new
and familiar predators remember that penguins evolved doing 60 million years in predator-free islands like New Zealand and many other places that didn't have predators so penguins could evolve and they could sometimes afford the fact that they they didn't need to fly because they didn't
need to skate but now human beings we are colonizing these places and sometimes on purpose or by accident we introduce new animals are new predators and penguins do not need how to defend on top of that we have as you mentioned correctly climate change which basically climate change in
the ocean is changing the availability of food close to the colonies when the chicks are small because the adults have to go get the food and come back and feed the chicks when as climate change is moving the food away from the colonies adults have to swim further and that demands more
energy and more time for the adults so by the time they come back to the colony sometimes the chicks are there or they end up feeding the chicks less so that increases the mortality of chicks and in the long term creates a decline in many penguin populations and now we're having an issue with
climate change on land because climate change is creating increasing the frequency and the intensity of heat waves and something that we haven't seen and we are seeing now is that we are having heat waves that are killing penguins because they reach the lethal temperature like here
in Patagonia Argentina a few years ago we register in one colony of families 44 degrees Celsius which is 112 Fahrenheit more or less in a penguin colony penguins they never leave the nest but they were leaving the nest because they were they knew they were going to die if they stay there so some
penguins are 1 kilometer far inland and they were leaving the nest trying to go and reach the coast to refresh themselves and in one area we have at least 300 penguins that die on their way healthy and young penguins dying because of the heat you know it's really hot and these penguins are
less than 50 centimeters tall so they couldn't even breathe they they were impacted by the heat you know heart attacks the the the heat stress killed them and of course if you are working in those hot days they walk among the bushes and the vegetation and it's even warmer down there and we
less error oxygen so that's why they that caused their mortality and during these heat waves the these heat waves also trigger wildfires and unfortunately this is crazy but penguins do not recognize the fire as a threat because they've never been exposed to fires so they stay in their nest and
even during the big wildfires in Australia and even here in Argentina we've seen penguins like bringing their feathers calmly behind the flames and they stain their nests until they die and this is really you know difficult to understand because all the animals recognize fire
penguins they don't do that they don't escape and that is a problem with that is a new problem for them in my interview with Deburs when she was telling me that the male penguins are out a number of the female penguins two to one in in some areas and that puto tambo the population is declined and now they're moving to send Lorenzo what do you think is causing these changes in the population?
So of course it depends on the on the depends on the species you know because all species behave in different ways in my generally penguins there are more males than females but that depends on the colony but for example in emperor penguins there are more females than males because it depends
on the breeding strategy penguins reflect very well what happens to the oceans like here in Patagonia for example we think that penguins were restricted to islands because they couldn't conquer the continent because there were too many land predators but when humans colonized this place and
started to prepare the ranches they poisoned a lot of predators eliminating puma and foxes and that gave penguins a great opportunity to conquer mainland and that's how put a tombo appear for example but then the all the distribution of penguins during the centuries were moving to the north were
moving northward now penguins are expanding to the north in the last 20 years they expanded the distribution range by one degree of latitude so they're moving to the north and they're going to colonies like San Lorenzo San Lorenzo in Peninsula Valdez is now the largest colony on the planet
with over 200,000 pairs when punta tombo is 140,000 pairs now so these changes occur all time and you know like 30 years ago because of the fans limitation or the logistic complications we used to study one colony and assume that that was happening to all the population and that was a mistake
because like starting one colony we'll tell you about that colony colonies are all connected into what we call metapopulation some colonies are sources of penguins exporting penguins young penguins to other colonies some other peng some other colonies are sinks receiving penguins
you know that decide to settle down for the first time there so we see this dynamic in all the population of penguins and now penguins maybe they're born there they're hatching colonies in the south but when they decide to start breeding they are settling down in the north
but we've just finished a work in which we study what was happening in the 90s and what's happening now at least in this part and penguins the population has been increasing in 9% in total now in these 30 years so when we see big colonies declining we also see big colonies increasing
in the northern part which is good news and it reflects that all the conservation efforts that have been done to design protected areas to improve the management of harmful activities has been very productive so if that's good news for conservation.
Previously we spoke about I think it's the current work that you're doing which is setting up tracking equipment for some of the migrating penguins who are going from south to north how has the introduction of this equipment helped your study of population changes
so that's fantastic because the technology has been very helpful to understand penguins needs more you know before that we used to know them only on land we didn't know what they were doing in the ocean or where they were so we we trapped penguins in the doing the
breeding system when they are raising their cheeks and that information has been critical to justify in front of politicians why we need to create a protected area and with that information we are reducing unnecessary conflicts with sectors like fisheries or oil spills because now we know
exactly when we need to implement that protection I mean 30 years ago we could have said okay let's make a protected area all year long now we can go in and now we don't need that because with the information we know that in one month we need protection in just that month and then the activities
can continue the rest of the year without harming wildlife or penguins you know so that's what how science has been useful right now for example just next week we are going to deploy satellite devices to penguins from four colonies as they go from southern Patagonia to the to Brazil
because they migrate during six months and this is very helpful not only to identify things that are important in terms of the ecology of the animals like females they migrate closer to the continent males go further offshore but now we see how they are overlapping with intense fisheries but how
they will overlap with the oil the oil the areas that Argentina wants to develop oil exploration exploitation and that help us to justify that we need this kind of protection in this moment and in that other so scientists in this case is fantastic to add credibility to the conservation
actions that we are proposing what penguin populations around the world are for most threatened or endangered by climate change impacts so what what we see in the world of penuces of course if you look at the pattern the penguins that are more in trouble are the ones that have to
coexist closer to human beings the penguins that coexist with people are the ones more in trouble in Africa and in South America for example the penguins are in Antarctica they are in a better shape let's call it like that but in terms of conservation what happens to penguins is the accumulation
of the overlap of different threats for example let's let's take the example of the African penguin there used to be 1 million 1.1 million pair pairs of penguins 100 years ago 1.1 million and now there are 10,000 pairs so it was a huge decline of almost 98% and that's because
there were 8 million ex-collected for consumption in 1914 1950 there were over 50 oil spills that killed thousands of penguins then there were over 50 there was over fishing that was really depleting the food sources that penguins were using and now we have climate change so in some
cases climate change is like the the last you know the the last row and we never gave them the chance and the the colonies continue to decline the population which was a continuum in the amoevia and in South Africa now it's fragmented so you have that case you also have the case of the Galapagos
penguin which was normally a small population now the population is 2,000 pairs but climate change is increasing the frequency and the intensity of elinio events and during the elinio the Galapagos penguins they skip breathing they don't they don't breathe they decide oh I don't
have any food for me so I won't breathe so that limits the recovery possibilities of the population and then of course you have different cases like let's let's take a look at the king penguin the king penguin they living some Antarctic areas around Antarctica they're really doing bad
in the Indian Ocean South Africa Ocean because the as I said climate change is moving away the food from those colonies the French territories cross the the smare other colonies there but in South America it is a good thing for for king penguins penguins are coming back those king penguins
were exploited and they were wiped out from all the South American areas and now they're coming back here because climate change is moving the food closer to South Georgia islands with there's a huge colony there so as South Georgia is increasing in population it is also exporting more
individuals that are now recolonizing South America so you have the case about what the same species and their two different scenarios responding in two different ways the blue Patagonia project tell us about that that seems like an amazing success story huge protected area how did that come
out and how did that be a model for for other conservation projects yes exactly I think that is one of the things we are proudest of you know because it was a huge effort to convince politicians and it is the what we did is really led all the project to create a Patagonia Assul or blue
Patagonia UNESCO biosphere reserve so it includes it protects 3.1 million hectares which is like 8 million acres of habitat almost like the the area of Belgium it is the largest UNESCO reserve in Argentina and 60% is in the ocean and the rest is on land so we work to justify the creation
and submit the application to Paris to France the headquarters of UNESCO the documents are 1,200 pages so we work like crazy to compile all the information but you know what is very important it comes from the main and biosphere program which is not like
only about animals it is also about humans that coexist with wildlife you know because it was created a long time ago as a way to strengthen the democracies also and I see that UNESCO saw in this place the opportunity to protect and to do things right in a place where that is huge in
terms of biodiversity but almost no people there are I would say 5000 people living in all that area so there is a chance to develop the economy of those areas without destroying the economy because we are coming from a century in which the wealth and the richness of the of our nations
was paid by the destruction of nature and now we have to go into a century in where we need to coexist otherwise we will go extinct as humans so this area represents that spirit how we can coexist develop ourselves satisfy our needs and also satisfy the needs of this of the wilder on top
of the UNESCO biosphere reserve we created the Punta Tomba marine protected areas which is in this same kind of complex of protected areas because you know 40 years ago here in Argentina the protected areas were only placed where the people were was visiting wildlife like if you have an
elephant seal colony they were protecting the the two is trail and the same for penguins now it was paying attention to the ocean and now thanks to the technology this is what we we've been discussing really the technology allow us to understand that yes they have an nest here but they're
swimming thousands of kilometers out of the ocean that we need to protect you know and now with the technology we are expanding the limits of the protected areas and that's one of the cases for the marine protected area in Punta Tomba which was only protected on land and now we are protecting
the places where penguins go to fish the marine protected areas now that what kind of rules are they having for things like fishing and how are these marine areas work in terms of helping to protect the penguins yeah so when we make an analysis of the different protected areas there is a huge
variety of cases and depends on also in the jurisdiction the country and the time of the year of the the time right the year because of course when you change administration things change and so in general you see that it is always positive because it is always positive if you think about
the future because sometimes you need to protect things not for what's happening now but for what will happen in the future there will be a lot of uses that we don't really they don't exist right now you know like deep sea mining didn't exist 40 years ago and it's a huge problem in many areas
and there are some uses that will will also be created that could be harmful so when we could take create protected areas that can also protect the wildlife from from from different plants that can be helpful of course it depends on the area you can improve the management of fisheries it
could be deep sea mining it could be oil exploration oil exploitation change them the roots of my time traffic of or oil tanker lanes so that adds up and in the long run you have a better managed area you know are they allowing the fishing to continue as it was before are they controlling it a
lot more now in yeah in general what we try to do is of course in the in an ideal situation it will be a no-take zone which is a place where they cannot fish but that's really hard to accomplish and you really need to justify that in general what we work is to design protected areas where you
have multiple uses that are not harmful but you can allow some some sort of fisheries with specific gear with good practices in specific areas and in specific moments of the year you know because again sometimes conservation fails because it's not realistic you know because we want
everything and everything is not realistic and you also have to negotiate with politicians with other sectors people need to to to leave you and and sometimes of course we need to draw a line what what is the limit and of course there is always enough information to justify why we need
to protect the area and what are the limits sometimes there are not many opportunities to create protected areas and when we see a window of opportunity we jump and we create it even if it's not ideal even if it's not minimal we always have the chance to want it is created once it
is created there is always a chance in the future to improve that and that has been the case in many in many ways in many situations in which we have you know all protected areas that were not ideal but then we work with new information to improve to enlarge it to make it more restricted to
some harmful activities but but this is something that we need to consider and this is part of the negotiation you don't get everything you want you get some and you have the hope that you can improve that in the future and we've seen that improvement happening when we spoke previously
Pablo one of the things which you mentioned was that King penguins were returning to one of their ancient habitats can you tell that story to Jimmy and Nadia so there is a very nice story I'm just back from the southern part of Chile there is a fantastic place called Parkkeeping Win or Ray
King Penguin Park and so the thing the stories that the landowners they used to raise sheep they didn't have penguins they didn't know anything about penguins but then she heard that there were people visiting the area and but people were you know disturbing the penguins they were putting
hats and and pipes and and you know like a hunker chiefs or you know to take pictures because they didn't know how to behave with penguins and they thought they were just like pets so this this this this person the owner of the run decided to to improve the implementation of the colony
we help in the management plan as well and now it's a place where people can go and enjoy the penguins and of course that helps in the conservation of the place but the surprising thing is that an archaeologist visited the area and discovered that there were tools made by the indigenous people
that those tools dated at least 500 years so the colony was there long time ago then it disappeared due to the harvesting 120 130 years ago and then when situations improved they were coming back the things that in the late 80s and early 90s some local people were selling that those penguins
light penguins by for $200 so the acts were coming and then they were taking the penguins to some ships that maybe were going to to Asia and the colony couldn't sell down there but the penguins continue to to establish there the of course it was forbidden to do that harmful activity
and now the colony is about 150 180 penguins and the colony will continue increasing and it's very interesting because it's very different to any other king penguin colony and the ecology is completely different therefore it's within the straight of Magellan and also in a
vehicle useless bay by a new till which has nothing to do with what king penguins are used to do in South Georgia South and in other ocean oceanic areas but it's also highlights one issue that we are exploring here and there which is the legal traffic of penguins that is happening and it's been
happening for a long time we know that penguins are always listed in the black market list you said earlier you studied languages have you tried to learn how to communicate with penguins have you been able to talk to the penguins or understand what they're saying or
so I do the brain they and I don't know they respond I don't know if I'm saying something but they they like to respond the young ones tend to respond to that I don't know if they feel threatened or what but it's interesting and you know different penguins they have different
vocalization ways and even within a species we understand not what they're saying but they have a special way to vocalize when they are fighting after they finish fighting and they're telling the you know the the enemy this is my land don't you dare come back or when they're calling a female
sometimes when they're bachelors and they weren't able to find a partner they go hmm which is more like a sad song and then of course they it's very common to see their to see them vocalizing during the sunset and I think that's one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles
on the planet you know when you have a nice day no wind and all penguins coming back from the ocean and vocalizing all together that's fantastic really and I remember we have a colleague he was an opera singer and he finished a thesis because he wanted to study the vocalization of
penguins he was interested in the songs and he made a very interesting this is you know analyzing the different frequencies that they use depending on on the context and different species they of course the vocalizing in different many different ways can't you think what some of your most memorable
experiences with penguins so I think one thing that was very important is when when doing this big oil spill when we started to release the first penguins back in the wild you know after collecting them when you see a penguin there is dying on the beach because they are oil
sometimes they are intoxicated because they were trying to take the oil out of their feather so they get intoxicated penguins when they get oil they cannot go back to the ocean because they lose their waterproof what a proof condition and the floatability so they cannot eat again and they
cannot drink water so they start to death for days sometimes weeks they must have very resistant so they really start to death and it's really sad so I remember the first time we have rehabilitated penguins and when you release them back in the wild and they go to the ocean
it's that was like a eureka moment like saying if I can do this and change the life of a penguin I can dedicate my life to penguins and do a lot of things for their conservation and somehow that's what I've been doing with my academic career with the global penguin society we have done an
estimation and we have been able to help at least 2.5 million penguins worldwide and this is just the beginning you know and so I do I'm really hopeful for conservation because we have seen the fantastic impact of our conservation actions that's it's incredible nothing but admiration
for everything you've done you won the Indianapolis Prize recently as well yeah there was a court you said that's for conservation science is necessary but so are the people who risk it what did you mean when you said that when you got the Indianapolis Prize?
yes because what I see now is that we need more brave people in conservation we need people with courage we need people to stand for their species for their environment for for what they believe in you can have the science you can be a fantastic scientist and have your credentials but you need
to use the science in a good way and do something else with the position that you have not only as a scientist in every role that you can have as an international citizen as in any role a human being can have but sometimes we are not brave enough and we have to be very very brave to defend the
species that we care about you know and you know go to the press go talk to our peers talk to politicians speak out and do something do something about that because I see a lot of problems here but people sometimes they don't dare stand for the species stand for their environment and
and defend them because and I'm I always like to talk about these two colleagues to research just because when you do research you spend a lot of time with your animal with your environment and you see a lot of things that are harmful and if you shut up if you don't see anything
nobody will so it's up to you to do something and that's why I need that conservation needs more brave people to to stand up and do something with what they see and what they believe in because you can be talking about conservation of your life but you have to you know to put your
I say your heart and your body where your mouth is as well but your sentiment interaction well thank you very much oh well that's uh it's been great to have you with us thank you thank you very very much for for for this opportunity and one thing that I would like
to share with the audience is that sometimes people think that oh because there's some conservation is working I don't have to do anything they will take care of and it's not like that we all need to do something it's up to us we're all those a billion people on this planet and if every single one
of us can do something very small you'll have a huge impact just one example is to avoid single use plastics for example imagine if we all avoid one piece it would be a billion pieces that will no will no be available flying or floating in the in in our oceans or on our planet so we need to do something even if it's very small we can change the world.
All right well um it's so great to have you here Rodrigo I'm really looking forward to speaking with you and hearing more about your story um so just to get started can you tell me what made you interested in this story well uh my interest in this topic is because in recent years
large forest fires have become more common in Chile this has been a significant impact not only on extensive areas of the central southern region of Chile but also in urban areas with a serious social effects is it's it's a fact that the largest scale forest fires
has have become larger and more dangerous in our country all this situation has generated very interesting debate about the responsibility of the forestry industry in this situation these are controversy and many criticisms regarding the responsibility of a plantation of exotic species. Yeah absolutely and so can you share with me you know tell me what your process
was in reporting on this story. Well I review information data and figures available uh from both the public and private sectors relate to the increase in forest fires in Chile. I also contacted different sources involved in Chile's forestry sector uh together there were opinions on the issue and obtain you know insights into the causes and measures that should be taken to to confront or to address uh this crisis.
So have you visited any of these places where some of these wildfires have taken place? Yes I did actually during during the these summers I was in the southern region of Chile in La Raucanía and could witness some of the effects of these mega fires and appreciate their magnitude and impacts. It's very impressive to see them and the consequences that they are
cousin. Yeah absolutely so tell me a little bit more about who you spoke with you know what what did people share with you and what was something that really stood out to you as important while you were doing these interviews. Well most of the sources I spoke with were academics who have analyzed and development development of forestry in Chile. Their perspective is that the way the forestry industry has grown in Chile with the introduction of exotic species is acting as a kind of
fuel of increasingly larger fires. They also emphasize the importance of having regulation, a governing forestry industry to prevent the situation from worsening the future. Why is this issue important and what should people know about wildfires in Chile? Well one thing that caught my attention is the social and community effects generally but mega fires. Studies indicate that the social impact of major fires is more significant
than the earthquakes. Chileans who believe that earthquakes are the worst natural disaster we face are not fully aware of how serious forest fires can be. Another crucial aspect is that the periods of wildfires we use to occur only in the summer are now happening month before and after that meaning there are many months throughout the year when the central
southern region of Chile is at the risk of being affected by the major forest fires. Wow yeah that's pretty incredible I have not heard that it's sort of akin to earthquakes so that's really interesting. Well yeah well thank you so much for being here I just want to open it up if there's anything else you wanted to add or anything else you wanted to share. No no thank you very much for these conversations. Published in print and digital since 2011 Patagon Journal is a bilingual
magazine in English and Spanish about Patagonia and the world's last world places. Head to our website patagonjournal.com where you can find our magazine and read our online articles. To subscribe support our work through our special premium membership program or buyback issues merch and more visit our online store at patagonstore.com any suggestions or to contribute stories to the magazine get in touch with us by email at editors at patagonjournal.com.