By Marcela Valente
Buenos Aires, Aug 9 1997 (IPS)

The spectacle of sounding whales, penguins, sea dogs, and elephant seals in courtship attracts every year thousands of tourists to the sparsely inhabited Patagonian shore of Argentina’s south Atlantic coast.

Nevertheless, prior to arrival on these southern shores -a paradise in what seems to many like the end of the world- few visitors realize they are about to experience one of the richest, most concentrated and fragile ecosystems on Earth.

Although Patagonia is blessed with 2,100 miles of ocean shore, only three percent of this expanse is blessed with extraordinary biodiversity.

Sixty miles of coastline along the Valdes Peninsula is so rich, valuable and fragile that UNESCO (United Nations Education and Culture Organisation) has added it the exclusive club of 100 areas declared as Natural Patrimony of the World.

Worldwide concern for the fauna of this area caused the Global Environment Fund (GEF) to finance a management plan drawn up by the Patagonian Nature Foundation and administered by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP).

“The management plan, which was researched for three years, is finally in place,” Eduardo Rodriguez Berges, a UNDP official, told IPS.

Research focused on four key areas: pollution, wildlife, tourism and fishing.

The challenge that planners confronted was to devise a project that went beyond Patagonia’s geographic and political boundaries in order to address the urgency of conservation and sustainable development throughout the region, while insuring well-harmonized cooperation.

At last November’s Third World Conference on Biodiversity in Buenos Aires, GEF president Mohamed El Ashry highlighted the Valdes Peninsula as the largest project ever financed by GEF in Argentina.

The Foundation will soon receive 5.2 million dollars to begin the project’s second phase. UNDP administers the funds, supplies the equipment, performs the evaluation and facilitates the many contacts that make the project possible.

One of the plan’s most notable characteristics is that it has enjoyed the cooperation of universities, non-governmental organizations, diverse government agencies and key industries throughout Patagonia – particularly the petroleum, fishing and tourism sectors.

Organisations such as the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation and the Wildlife Foundation have also played critical roles.

For the first time, a census has been conducted to establish wildlife baselines that must be respected while the region continues it’s socio-economic development.

Jose Maria Musmesi, executive director of the Patagonian Nature Foundation, supplied IPS with the census data.

“We have 35,000 elephant seals, 70,000 ‘single hair’ sea dogs, 15,000 ‘double hair’ sea dogs, a million pairs of penguins, countless birds – cormorants, albatross, gulls – and about 1,000 whales of the 4,000 that remain in the whole world.”

The very concentration of wildlife is what makes the region’s ecosystem so fragile. Earlier this year, an oil spill along the Punta del Este coast (of Uruguay) resulted in the death of “only” 3,000 sea dogs since the disaster occurred near an exclusive oceanside resort that could afford to clean up the mess.

Musmesi says that if a similar spill occurred in Patagonia, there would be a much slower response, preventing timely clean-up. “If the Punta del Este spill occurred here, it could cause an irreversible collapse of the ecosystem”.

The petroleum industry accounts for 20 percent of the economy in Chubut province, where Valdes Peninsula is located, contributing 1.1 billion dollars to the regional economy.

But some 41,000 penguins pay with their lives the price of such activities, as a result of environmental pollution.

The Patagonian Nature Foundation has issued a number of warnings concerning south Atlantic fisheries. “We’re about ten years behind in trying to control the damage,” Musmesi said.

Due to overfishing practices, for example, hake are being captured which are so small as to have no commercial value, he said.

“If we don’t utilize our resources rationally, overfishing hake won’t just affect that one species but will have repercussions throughout life’s whole ecological chain,” he stressed.

Patagonian fisheries contribute with 500 million dollars to Argentina’s 720-million fishing industry. Fishers themselves have recognized the necessity of placing limits to capture, to preserve endangered species.

On the other hand, Musmesi says that tourism has not yet become an environmental hazard.

Each year, some 100,000 visitors come to Patagonia. In 1996, during the limited time period when whales are visible along the Patagonian coast, 40,000 tourists arrived, up from 15,000 in 1992.

Tourism generates some 54 million dollars for the Patagonian economy.

“For us, tourism is a development tool. Still, it is necessary to plan it carefully and to keep it under control,” Musmesi said. So far, scarce hotel accommodations have insured that the region is not swamped with visitors.

The construction of new hotels and other economic infrastructure will be regulated by the Coast Committee, made up of Patagonian economic and investment interest sectors.

“We want the Patagonian Nature Foundation to serve as executive director of this Committee which also represents businesses, governments, universities and a host of other organisms,” UNDP’s Rodriguez said.

Recently, a regional assessment was made by the Foundation in conjunction with the Wildlife Conservation Society (also known as the New York Zoological Society). Stephen Olsen, an expert in coastal management from the University of Rhode Island, has just given final approval to the document.

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