Since Chile’s Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve (CHBR) at the southern tip of the Americas was created in 2005, the number of foreign tourists has doubled, with nature tourism being the principal attraction for visitors to the region. With the aim of preventing negative impacts of tourism activity on the biological and cultural diversity and to contribute to sustainable tourism, the interdisciplinary team of the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program (SBCP) at the Omora Ethnobotanical Park (OEP), in coordination with the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB) and the University of Magallanes (UMAG) in Chile and the University of North Texas (UNT) in the US, has led, for 17 years long-term ecological research, including floristic inventories that have identified the Magellanic subantarctic ecoregion as a global “hotspot” for bryophyte diversity. This discovery captured the attention not only of the scientific community, but also authorities, decision makers, tourism operators and the general public. However, scientists were challenged with transmitting and communicating the importance of these findings, given that frequently these small plants lack common names and are completely unknown by the majority of the public.
Results/Conclusions
To overcome this difficulty, OEP’s team of scientists, philosophers, artists and students from elementary to university levels has worked to create metaphors and narratives about the rich biological and cultural diversity of the CHBR. These narratives have been elaborated through the creation of a Chilean – US editorial line of books on Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation to contribute to education and sustainable tourism. Scientists began to refer to the “Miniature Forests of Cape Horn” to denote the small ecosystems formed by diverse mosses, liverworts, lichens, mushrooms, invertebrates on soils, barks, rocks and other substrates. This metaphor fostered the creation of “Ecotourism with a hand lens in the Miniature Forests of Cape Horn” which constitutes today a new sustainable tourism activity, and represents a diversification and strengthening of the region’s tourism offerings. Coordinated by authorities and public services it promotes a revenue source that is environmentally and economically sustainable for the local community, and could be replicated in other parts of the country and the world. In 2016, the CBHR, together with OEP, was recognized as one of the “2016 Top 100 Sustainable Destinations” for its innovative work contributing to sustainable tourism, offering a model for integrating science and tourism into biocultural conservation.