A forest outside of time
High in the Nahuelbuta coastal mountains sits a forest that is part of a lost world. This is one of the last strongholds of Araucaria araucana, the monkey puzzle tree. These trees are living fossils, with an ancestry stretching back to the Jurassic period. Fossil evidence shows the Araucariaceae family reached its peak diversity between 200 and 65 million years ago, when their cones and seeds were food for herbivorous dinosaurs. Some individual trees in this park are nearly 2,000 years old, direct descendants of forests that existed when South America was part of the supercontinent Gondwana.
The Nahuelbuta mountain range is itself ancient, a geological formation older than the Andes. This coastal range is geographically separate from the Andean spine, creating an "island habitat" that has allowed this population of Araucaria to evolve in isolation. This is the only place outside the Andes where these trees are found. The park's highest point, Piedra del Águila, reaches 1,379 meters and on clear days offers views from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean. This high-altitude ecosystem is also a refuge for rare wildlife, including the world's smallest deer, the pudú, and one of only two known populations of the endangered Darwin's fox.
People of the Pehuén
The Mapuche indigenous people have a connection to these forests that predates the arrival of Europeans by centuries. A subgroup of the Mapuche, the Pehuenche, are named for this very tree—their name means "people of the pehuén," which is the Mapudungun name for the Araucaria. The tree's large, nutritious seeds, called piñones, have been a staple food source for generations.
Each year, families travel to the high forests for the harvest. The traditional diet incorporates piñones into everything from flour to a fermented drink called muday. The relationship is respectful; traditional beliefs hold that one must ask permission from the spirits before taking from the environment. This ancient bond between the people and the forest continues today, linking both a cultural and a deep-time biological past. The park, whose name means "Big Puma" in Mapudungun, protects this intertwined history within its 6,832 hectares.