“We do not believe that Trillium will do a project that cares for the southern forests of Tierra del Fuego because here is the proof of what they did in their own state.”

—Maria Luisa Robleto, Greenpeace Chile,
holding photographs of Trillium clear-cuts in Whatcom County, Washington, USA

Protect Ancient Gondwana Forest / Tierra del Fuego - Victory

The southernmost forest of our planet is on Tierra del Fuego, an island shared by Chile and Argentina. This extremely fragile, ancient forest at the end of the earth is home to condors, llama-like guanacos, foxes, penguins, magellanes woodpeckers and over 200 species of birds. The forest of lenga trees is a global treasure whose future will be decided in the next few months.

If Trillium Corporation, of Bellingham, Washington, has its way, the lenga will be cut down and exported to the United States as a specialty wood to replace declining supplies of black cherry. Trillium, notorious for clear-cutting temperate rainforests in North America, bought 770,000 acres on the Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego and 220,000 acres on the island's Argentinian side in the early 1990s. In June of this year, the multinational logging company plans to start clear-cutting 11,000 acres of ancient lenga forest on the Argentinian side.

More than 200 environmental organizations in Argentina and Chile have been fighting for eight years to thwart Trillium's plans and to save the forests of Tierra del Fuego. "The Trillium project will affect a unique ecosystem, our ancestral woods; it will harm air, ground, plants and animals, and undermine the livelihoods of local residents dependent on eco-tourism," warns the Argentinian organization FinisTerrae. In both countries, community-based eco-tourism offers a sustainable economic alternative to destructive logging by a multinational corporation.

Protests at Trillium Corporate Headquarters, Bellingham, Washington, USA.

Regional activists are asking Trillium to sell its forest holdings back to the governments of Chile and Argentina, and return to Chile 156,000 acres that Trillium still hasn't paid for. The two countries are already planning how they will protect the Tierra del Fuego forests if Trillium leaves. Argentina plans to create a Biosphere Reserve on its side of the border, and Chile wants to establish a national park.

Now visionaries from around the world are joining the campaign to save the Tierra del Fuego forest. They see the Chile-Argentina bi-national collaboration as a first step toward creating the Gondwana Forest Sanctuary. Gondwana is the name of the ancient super-continent that split apart more than 100 million years ago, dividing the Gondwana forest ecosystem among what are now southern Chile and Argentina, New Zealand, Australia,Tasmania and southern Africa. Even today the forests of these now separate land masses are very similar.

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