By: Peter Hartmann
(Read news in Aisen Reserva de Vida)
The publication about the logging of part of Cerro Castillo National Park has had a lot of repercussions. And we suspect that this is not the only attempt to develop protected areas. Not to mention the salmon farming concessions and their mortgages in these areas. And the thing is, do protected areas and national assets matter to anyone in this country? The truth is that it seems that there is a conspiracy, not only of speculators, real estate companies, investors or whatever they want to call them, but also of the state institutions to pretend that they do not exist.
It is worth analyzing this last case, in which the SAG authorizes a subdivision on the edge (and inside) of a protected area without asking CONAF, nor considering articles 10 g) and p) and 11 d) of the Environmental Law. To top it all off, there had already been a bad experience with a previous land development on the edge of the Rio Claro Protected Area. Then, because of a complaint from some neighbors, the Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente, SMA, is the one that inspects and reports, in 2020, the impact on the national park, a report that came to us by ricochet and we consulted CONAF, which in turn sent an official report to Bienes Nacionales. Four years went by and the developers were even on the verge of building a bridge to the national park! And of course, these developers are not just anyone, but heavyweight real estate companies (Chile Rural AG) that went all the way to the Supreme Court and threatened SAG officials to sue them if they "block" their business. Therefore, the SMA is being very careful.
Something similar happens with salmon farms, where neither the Undersecretary of the Armed Forces (before the Navy), nor the Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture have ever consulted CONAF or BBNN about whether the concessions they are processing are located in a protected area and affect national public property. In fact, in recent times, we have come across the most unusual cases of concessions, even in national parks, that do not even have environmental permits, others that are there for five to nine years without operating without expiring and now they will be relocated, two with mortgages already relocated, and even one to be relocated that is also expiring and has authorization from CONAMA despite knowing that it is in a national park. And if the protected areas do not give a damn to those who by law should watch over their protection, how can they pretend that the vultures do not take possession of them?
Even more unusual is that, knowing that there are squatters in a national park, no one does anything to remove them. In fact, they pretend they are committing other transgressions and try to charge them, but the fact that they are in the park does not matter. We are seeing this in the case of Nova Austral, which has 19 concessions in Alberto de Agostini NP, and the concessions that Cooke Aquaculture has in Laguna San Rafael NP and Biosphere Reserve, where for years the SMA has been looking for the "cuesco a la breva" and it seems that these parks don't care. Worse still, in finding environmental transgressions, serious ones, they have even found the Environmental Court ruling "that they cannot be so heavy and apply such terrible punishments to the poor little Norwegian salmon company", while the national park, thank you very much! The truth is that sometimes it gives the impression that everything is just a big "partridge's ball" and in this current country the only things that matter are appearances and the vile US$.
We were just in a meeting with the Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture in which this issue was discussed. And one of the conclusions we reached is that this illegal concessions were part of a modus operandis that lasted for decades and in which today the State (usually uncoordinated) cannot find a way to remove them without paying high costs. The truth is that, apart from the tremendous mistake made by previous administrations and for which no one is accountable, one cannot explain how the powers that be take over part of national parks where they clearly cannot legally be, without there being any way to get them out of there, when they are only concessions and can expire. If you as a citizen were to do something like that, and on top of that you destroy and pollute the park, they would surely kick you out or put you in jail.