In Tierra del Fuego there is a bay that for centuries explorers have considered of little use. Too low for ships, too difficult to reach, too far away. Today, that remote stretch of Chilean coast has become one of the most astonishing places in global conservation: the only mainland colony of king penguins existing outside the sub-Antarctic islands. And the credit, at least in part, goes to a 72-year-old former kindergarten teacher.
The story of Cecilia Durán Gafo, told by Guardianit seems like something out of a novel. When, in the early 1990s, she saw the first penguins appear on her property, in the Bahía Inútil, Durán did not imagine that she would become the guardian of a colony destined to attract biologists and visitors from all over the world. King penguins, Aptenodytes patagonicuslive almost exclusively on the islands of the Southern Ocean. Yet they have frequented these windy coasts of Chilean Patagonia for hundreds of years, probably because the shallow waters offer natural protection from large marine predators.
The beginning of the colony
For a long time, however, the penguins were unable to establish themselves permanently. Too much human pressure, too much disturbance. Durán told the Guardian that some specimens were even captured by people who presented themselves as scientific researchers. “They put the penguins in cages and took them to Japan,” he explained to the English newspaper. After that episode, the animals disappeared for years.
When they returned, in 2010, the situation seemed to repeat itself: too intrusive visitors, stolen eggs, photographs a few centimeters from the animals. “They dressed them in hats and sunglasses and took selfies,” Durán recalled. Within a short time the colony collapsed: from around 90 specimens only eight remained. It was then that Cecilia Durán made a decision: to protect the penguins by delimiting part of her property. She started alone, spending entire days on the beach to make sure no one disturbed the animals. “I came here with a thermos and a sandwich,” he says. “I stayed all day, frozen to the bone.”
In 2011 those lands officially became a private reserve intended for conservation for the next hundred years. Today the protected area covers 30 hectares and is home to a team made up of biologists, veterinarians and ecotourism operators. Even tourism here has found a different balance: visitors, up to 15 thousand a year, can observe the penguins only from a distance, along controlled routes.
The nights against the minks
The challenge wasn’t just about humans. In Tierra del Fuego, minks and gray foxes introduced by man in the last century attacked eggs and chicks. For years the reserve team worked at night to remove them from the colony. They bought meat scraps from local butchers and left them far from the protected area, thus accustoming the predators to hunting elsewhere. Over time, the results also arrived. Last year, 23 chicks survived – the highest number ever recorded in the colony.
A natural laboratory
The reserve has also become a scientific research center. Scientists collaborating with the Antarctic Research Trust have observed that penguins arriving from colonies thousands of kilometers away are able to quickly adapt to the food available in the Chilean bay. A feature that could prove invaluable in a marine ecosystem increasingly altered by the climate crisis. The story of the Bahía Inútil, after all, is striking because it tells of a fragile coexistence but built on rules, patience and presence, in a corner of the planet where the wind almost always blows and the penguins continue to return.
