Chile's Pine Forests: A Botanical Dinosaur Bound For Extinction?

In Quinquen, an indigenous community in southern Chile, Ricardo Melinir shows off a forest of Chilean pine trees -- the araucaria araucana, a "living fossil" seen as sacred by several local tribes.

Quinqun, Chile, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Dec, 2018 ) :In Quinquen, an indigenous community in southern Chile, Ricardo Melinir shows off a forest of Chilean pine trees -- the araucaria araucana, a "living fossil" seen as sacred by several local tribes.

He managed to save the "Monkey Puzzle" trees -- some of which are 1,000 years old or more -- from logging companies, but they are still under threat from blight and climate change.

"It is difficult to say how old these pines are," says the 60-something Melinir, shivering in the cold.

He points to a giant tree felled in the winter months earlier this year, a victim of heavy snow and old age.

The forest is located in Araucaria province, in the Chilean Andes about 600 kilometers (375 miles) south of the capital Santiago.

The trees, declared a part of Chile's national heritage in 1976, can grow up to 60 meters (200 feet) in height and three meters in diameter.

In Quinquen, at least 40 percent of the pine tree forests are wild, says Melinir, who is the head of the Pehuenche community, which takes its name from the tree's fruit.

In 1991, the restoration of a democratic government in Chile following the Pinochet dictatorship that began in 1973 allowed the Pehuenche to recover their ancestral lands, which they had lost 50 years before.

Today, 50 or so families -- a total of 200 people, all of them named Melinir -- live throughout the area, which is the first indigenous conservation zone established in Chile.

But climate change has meant more wildfires, and many trees have been destroyed. Their pine nuts -- prized by chefs the world over -- have been stripped from what Neruda once called "Chile's towers."All told, the trees are more vulnerable than ever.