“The Alerces are our life, history and for whom we fight. We as environmental defenders will put our lives on the line if necessary.”

Jonathan BarichivichClimate Scientist and Global Ecology, leader of the research that revealed the age of the Millennial Larch (Lañilawal), today tells us about his current challenges as part of the Larch Corporation and the emergencies that we must attend to as a society.

By Valentina Luza Carrión / Science in Chile.-He studied at the Universidad Austral and currently also works in Paris and is part of the board of the Corporación Alerce, a group of researchers, academics and environmental defenders from various sides of society, who share the goal of helping to protect the ancient Alerces from the politics, education and science. They work hand in hand with organizations, CONAF and other partners because, as she mentioned Barichivich “threats to the Alerce never stop”.

“Nature has little representation in the courts of Justice, it has no rights, that is why there are people like us who represent it” mentioned the scientist, the Corporation draws on the different perspectives that exist in society and has been successful in translate that knowledge into decision-making and the valuation of these ecosystems to the general public. The scientist mentions that many important things have happened in the Corporation in the last two years, such as the discovery of the age of the Millennial Larch, whose name has been revealed as Lañilawal.

Lañilawal’s age

This news was the product of an investigation between Professor Antonio Lara and Jonathan Barichivich where they were able to make an estimate of the age of the tree which turned out to be much older than they thought. To do this, they extracted a sample that was the least invasive possible from the tree, since it is alive in only 28% of its entire contour. The rest are dead.

The first thing was to characterize his health, where Dr. Camila Tejo, also part of the Alerce Corporation, verified the state of his glass a few years ago, which allowed an initial diagnosis to be made. One of her main concerns was the effect of the drought on the vegetation that was growing on the tree. We saw many trees dying in the environment, but the Alerce itself was not known. That is why “we take a sample of wood that is thinner than the thickness of a pencil and there we count 2,465 years and that is more or less 40% of the size of the trunk.”

There they could see that the tree stopped responding positively to the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere around 1998, the year in which it began to slow its growth due to the lack of rain, increased temperatures and dryness of the atmosphere.

However, with the extracted sample there was still a long way to go, “we reached about 40% of the history of the tree, and that is where we used science to estimate the possible age range, and there is an 80% probability that it is over 5 thousand years. The scientist mentions that due to technical limitations of this type of study it is difficult to know the exact age of the tree. However, he indicates that the exact age of the tree is not relevant.

Almost all the trees sampled in the world in which the age can be estimated are under a thousand years, there are very few those over 3,000 years, “they are really a treasure of the earth system, they have witnessed how the atmosphere, the winds and the rain have changed, so they are time capsules” indicated the member of the Corporation. “Trees, apart from being a very special form of life because they connect two worlds (towards the ground and towards the sky), are organisms where life and death coexist, because a tree is alive only in a layer of cells that make it up. it envelops, but toward the center, all the wood is dead.”

Results and subsequent measures

Regarding the results of the investigation, Jonathan mentioned that upon knowing the true value of the tree and the deplorable state it was in, they decided to disseminate the information, which surprisingly did not seem to arouse much interest in Chile at first “I presented the results to raise awareness to the public of its global uniqueness, but it had to go abroad for it to have value. The good thing is that the rest of the world did appreciate it a lot and that gives us hope. Ancient trees have always been something that unites us as a civilization, bordering on mysticism and magic. Because so few remain, people have a fascination with them and they are treasures of the natural world that are about to disappear irreparably.”

Although the scientist mentioned that the measures taken to care for the Millennial Larch have gone in the right direction, they have not been enough since there has been no injection of resources from the government, he mentions that the challenge as citizens is to demand that the protections and use the package of measures proposed. This consists of a perimeter protection network around the trunk and roots of the tree, removing the platform that is on top of the tree. This will protect the entire immediate environment, the roots and the trunk. Fortunately, CONAF has so far managed to regulate overtourism, whose excess was finally killing the object that people came to see, therefore, it has been a very useful and timely measure, “despite CONAF’s good measure, there are forces that they still want to encourage more tourism above the recommended carrying capacity, which was around 12 people and now the maximum limit was set at 20, therefore, it would be necessary to put in place a permanent surveillance system that allows people to be identified that transgresses the rules established through guided tours”. The number of visitors on a guided tour is a compromise between the protection of the Park and the quality of the visitor experience, also considering that in these times of pandemic, social distancing is important.

Guardians of the Millennial Larch

The scientist mentions that he carries with him a family history where his ancestors have taken care of this Millennial Larch, since they have always lived in that place, however, it has been a difficult fight, “they want to remove us from our territory and place of historical settlement for 3 generations, it is a fight that we have been waging against a group of notaries and that continues with a lot of abuse of power, on December 27, 2022 they tried to evict uswhich fortunately did not materialize and we as environmental defenders are going to give our lives if necessary, it is an unbreakable commitment, because the Alerces are our life, our history and they are the ones we fight for”.

Using the memory of trees to predict the future

Barichivich is currently working on a scientific project of excellence and great scope in Paris, financed by the European Union, a project that only 10% of the best scientists in the world obtain. The goal of this research is to use the memory of trees to teach models that predict the weather how trees interact with the earth system. That is, read that memory and, for example, translate how they absorb CO2, how their physiology responds to the scale of a century and use these results later to predict what can happen in the 21st century. Within that, Jonathan mentions that he has special interest in predicting with his numerical model how these long-lived trees and their small shelters will respond later with a greatly changed climate, since by their nature these organisms are an extreme example of resistance and adaptation.

Hope and projections

In relation to the future, the scientist stressed that we are in a sea of ​​uncertainty in environmental and social matters, “I think there will be many struggles and more and more radical,” he mentioned.

The pace of change is exponential, unlike two decades ago, “I see that a more radical world is going to become, due to the injustices and abuses that are taking place, here society and its judicial system do not have the capacity to change to react” in this, he explained that social structures lack the speed to generate the changes that are urgently required today, “the new Constitution was the appropriate response to the change we are experiencing, although for some it was radical, it must be mentioned that at the speed that change is evolving it was the appropriate response, but that opportunity has already been lost”.

In this, he emphasized the tendency of society to maintain what is current and advance little by little, however, there is no time for that, and there is no way that we can sustain the current standard of living for a long time.

In our territory, which is characterized by its nature and the thousand-year-old larches, one of the challenges we have is the true protection of the larches from overtourism, particularly the Millenary Lañilawal Larch and even its guardians – we, the Henríquez-Vivanco family.

The other challenge is the construction or non-construction of the controversial T-720 route between La Unión and Corral, which would make the Alerce Costero National Park more vulnerable and would mean once again the triumph of political and economic interests over nature, even in this Boric government that is supposed to have a more modern and environmental look. One more challenge is to stop the destruction of the alerzas and their habitat from real estate subdivisions in the Puerto Montt and Llanquihue area. If these struggles against anthropocenic forces disguised as progress or false private conservation manage to reach port, it will be a good measure of how our future will be in the territory in the decades of great changes to come.

“The window is almost closed but now is a critical time to change and defend nature, if we fall, others have to come after us and continue the fight because there is no time. I want to call for environmental defense in these times of radical change and to join organizations such as the Corporación Alerce and other civil organizations to strengthen the protection of ancient larches and all of the nature that remains to us,” he concluded.