The Iberá National Park located in the province of Corrientes, northeast Argentina and the new Patagonia National Park in Chile, they were created on December, 2018

Last December 5, 2018, the National Congress of Argentina approved the creation of the Iberá National Park located in the province of Corrientes, northeast Argentina.

It has an area of ​​159,800 hectares, protects the second largest wetland in the world and these lands were donated by the Conservation Land Trust (CLT) and the Flora and Fauna Argentina organization, an initiative promoted by Douglas Tompkins and his wife, founders of CLT.

These new lands were added to the 553 thousand hectares of estuaries and wetlands of the adjacent Iberá Provincial Park and one of the main objectives of the Park is the reintroduction of valuable species, such as the jaguar, the deer of the pampas, the anteater, the tapir, the collared peccary, the big scarlet macaw, the “muitú” bird (Crax fasciolata), the giant river otter, the “aguará guazú” maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) and the red-legged seriema.

In the case of the new Patagonia National Park in Chile, it was created on December 11, 2018, within the Aysén region in the southern section of Chile.

It has more than 304 thousand hectares that can be visited at the moment with a free entry fee and is very suitable for walking along its extensive trails that go from Chile Chico to Cochrane, and where there are already campsites and hotels, as well as restaurants and a museum located just 25km from Cochrane.

The new park integrates 85 thousand hectares donated by the Tompkins Conservation Foundation in 2017 to Chile, in addition to the National Reserves Jeinimeni and Cochrane Lake, among other areas, so this National Park has the great attraction of presenting two major types of vegetation: the arid steppe, typical of the Argentine Patagonia, and coigüe trees (Nothofagus dombeyi) forests, representative of the temperate Chilean Patagonia – and both combined, make it possible to visit extensive areas of pastures, wetlands, mountains, lakes and forests.

Last but not least, another of the characteristics of this new National Park is that in these lands live endangered animals, such as the South Andean Derr “huemul”, the puma, the Andean condor, the colocolo or the Pampas cat (Leopardus colocola), and the Chilean flamingo.