Bigfoot or a trip to the Rockies

A few weeks ago my wife and I visited Western USA, and in our road trip (by chance thanks to a fortuitous encounter with a couple who had just visited the place), ended up visiting Pikes Peak, Colorado. The mountain of 14,100 feet (4,300 m) is right next to Colorado Springs, in the Pike National Forest. A densely forested area in the Rockies. The road takes you all the way up to the summit. The view is amazing (there is also a cog railway that reaches the summit).

To our surprise there were road signs showing a "Bigfoot crossing", a wood carving (see below, with me next to it) of Bigfoot and an imprint of the creature's "big" foot in concrete (next to me on the ground in the photo). A sign informed tourists about a sighting here in 1989.

An amusing place indeed. However I must admit that the thousands of square miles of pine and aspen forests that we saw on our journey across Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming as well as the thick woods of Western Oregon and California (especially the Redwood and Sequoia forests, so similar to the Patagonian alerce Fitzroya cupressoides to which they are related)impressed me deeply. It could be the home to this "bigfoot" creature. There is plenty of space for it as well as other forms of wildlife.

Patagonian forests on the other hand, with their "Southern Beech" forests (Nothofagus), are quite different, more somber perhaps, more ominous, with plenty of underbrush, which lacked among the pines in North America. But also quite different: no squirrels, deer, elk or bears. More birds perhaps (no crows of course, they are not found in Patagonia) but less mammals.

Enjoy the photos:

Summer 2013 road trip to the US, Bigfoot and Austin Whittall at Pikes Peak
Click to see the full photo. Copyright © 2013 by Austin Whittall

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2013 by Austin Whittall © 

The Patagonian forests, the home for its cryptids

 

In this post of my 2010 Biodiversity series on Patagonia I will mention the forest, Patagonia's amazingly beautiful woods. it is the place where Patagonian dwarves, ogres, trolls, and most of its lake creatures live. It is however an endangered habitat.

Unique forests

The Patagonian forests are one of the World’s five most important temperate forests and it is the only one in South America.

Nearly one third of the World’s “untouched” temperate forest is in Patagonia. [1]

It is a unique forest because it is totally isolated from the other South American temperate forests and jungles by at least 1,500 km of arid terrain (I have called this the arid gap).

This isolation is comparable to that of an island. There is no exchange between the Patagonian forest and other South American forests.

For this reason, most of its species are endemic (they are only found there and nowhere else in the world), relict of an era when they belonged to a larger forested area.

It extends along both sides of the Andes, from 35°S to 56°S, and from the Pacific Ocean to the western border of the Patagonian steppe. The forest is a long and narrow band running along the Chilean-Argentine border.

Its surface is about 7.2 million hectares in Chile and another 2.6 million in Argentina, that is 9.8 million hectares or 98,000 km² (38,000 sq. mi.), which may seem small, but is actually larger than Portugal or Austria.

However, since the arrival of Europeans, the forests have been shrinking constantly. The part that has been worst hit, is in Chile, north of Chiloé Island and south of the Bio-Bio river. It is a densely populated area and forests have been cut to turn the area into fields for grazing and farm land.

Current and Historic (pre-1550 AD) Forest Coverage in Patagonia .
Copyright © 2010 by Austin Whittall. [3]

Threats

Introduction of foreign species such as Ponderosa Pine (pinus ponderosa), Oregon Pine ( Pseudotsuga menziesii ) and Murrayana Pine (pinus contorta) which grow faster and displace the local slower growing trees is a serious threat to the native species.

A study has shown that the Murrayana pine expands along the steppe while the Oregon pine is displacing the arid woodlands dominated by a native conifer “Ciprés” (Austrocedrus chilensis). [2]

In Chile the paper and pulp industry has promoted the planting of these pines, while in Argentina their hardiness have led to them being planted along the steppe, where there is less rainfall. They can also be found in urban and suburban areas surrounding the Andean towns, where they propagate quickly.

Last but not least, sawmills have reduced forests outside of the protected areas within Patagonia.

One of these logging projects, Trillium, in Tierra del Fuego, was to cut down a very large area of Lenga forest. The Chilean Supreme Court ended it in 1997 but it refused to die [4]. For full details on this unsustainable project read about it at this (external link) site [5].

The company they established in Argentina, Lenga Patagonia S.A., still appears as a member of the Asociación Forestal Argentina (Argentine Forestry Association) [6] but its web domain has lapsed and belongs to someone else.

The story ends well (in Chile): Goldman Sachs acquired Trillium in 2002 and after taking into account the public opinion's opposition to the logging project, donated it to Wildlife Conservation Society, an NGO based in New York, US. I am not sure about what happened to Trillium's Argentine affiliate.

Fortunately, most of the National Parks in both countries protect the forested areas as can be seen in the following map (blue shade indicates National Parks).

Patagonia National Parks . Copyright © 2010 by Austin Whittall.

Bibliography.

[1] Greenpeace. (2004). Patagonia Chilena. ¿Crónica de una muerte anunciada? Santiago. Online. pp. 14.
[2] Rusch, Verónica, Schilter, Tomá and Ghersa, Claudio, (2006) Invasión de coníferas forestales en áreas de estepa y bosques de ciprés de la cordillera en la Región Andino Patagónica. Ecol. austral v.16 n.2 Córdoba jul./dic. 2006.
[3] The map showing current and historical distribution of the Patagonian Forest is a composite. I took information from several sources and blended them into the map:
   - Enciclopedia de la Flora Chilena. Matorral y Bosque Patagónico.
   - Resumen Vision para la biodiversidad de la ecorregion de los bosques templados lluviosos de Chile y Argentina. Doc. No. 1. WWF Chile.
   - WWF. A lovely map which I have not been able to locate after I downloaded it over a year ago. Visit WWF Chile Online. Their map is the part above the red line on my map.
[4] Online.
[5] Chilean Forest Preservation and the Project River Condor.
[6] Quienes la Integran. Asociacion Forestal Argentina.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity
 
Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©
 

Patagonian Monsters - Environment

 
In several posts I have mentioned the forests and the steppe, but, as an image is worth a thousand words, I have decided to include a couple of photographs that I took during two of my holidays in Patagonia (2007 and 2009). They show both ecological regions of Patagonia: the forest and the steppe.

The first one below shows the Nothofagus forest, mostly coihue trees in mid autumn by a stream on the "Ruta de los siete lagos" close to San Martín de los Andes, in Neuquén province, Argentina.

Coihue (Nothofagus) forest. Copyright © 2009 by Austin Whittall

The next photograph was taken further south, close to the "Cueva de las Manos", in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. I took it looking west, towards the Andes which can be seen in the distance (there, between the peaks is Lake Pueyrredón) some 80 km away (50 mi.). In the foreground, the small shrubs and tough coirón grass. Notice the sand between the bushes and how the clouds remain over the mountains but not over the steppe. Rainfall is abundant in the mountains. Also notice the snow capped peaks in summer (I took the photograph in January 2007).

Steppe by Cueva de las Manos. Copyright © 2007 by Austin Whittall

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Lake Monsters - The origin of their habitat. Part 2

 

Having looked at the origin of the Patagonian lakes (Part 1 Here), we can conclude that any "lake monsters" must have had to come from outside the region and the only area where nowadays large mammals can be found in South America, are the subtropical and tropical regions of Northern Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia.

However current aridity in Patagonia and its northern border would impede migration of tropical or temperate region animals into the wetter and forested Andean region of Patagonia. See this arid area in the map below:

"Arid gap" map.Adapted from [2]. Copyright © 2009 by Austin Whittall

The map above shows the "tropical and subtropical" jungles and forests to the north of Argentina, and their southern border (upper red line). It also shows the Andean Forests along the Andes between Argentina and Chile and their border (bottom red line). The area in between is the "Arid Gap" that any creature moving north to south would have to bridge. It comprises not only the dry Patagonian steppe but also an arid shrubland region. See a photograph of the steppe Here.

Besides, Patagonia's cold climate is the opposite to the one prevailing in those creatures' current tropical/temperate habitat.

Nevertheless climatic changes of the post-glacial period, which shifted the Patagonian forest ranges northwards, out of Patagonia and south towards it from the subtropical region, may have allowed the formation of a continuous forest bridge through which animals of these more balmy climes could have moved into the southern Andean forests and thus crossed the current barrier of a dry, waterless stretch of land several hundred kilometers wide.

See a photograph of the Patagonian forest Here.

In Central Chile, at Talinay (30°40 S, 71°35’ W), a relict forest growing in the midst of a currently arid region is proof of this possibility. This forest thrives on the mist blown in from the ocean and its vegetation is very similar to the Valdivian rainforest of Patagonia. It could have originated by the Valdivian forest’s northwards advance during the Ice Ages or, as a survivor of the ample subtropical forests that covered southern South America at the end of the late Cenozoic Era.

The former is more likely and means that the temperate Patagonian forest extended out of Patagonia merging with the tropical forests, habitat of the many subtropical creatures.

Rainfall patterns during the late Cenozoic Era some 30 to 50 thousand years ago confirm the prevalence of humid conditions in what is now the arid horseshoe that separates Patagonian forests from the subtropical jungle in northern Argentina.

These damper conditions could have narrowed this Arid Continental horseshoe maybe even creating a continuous forest coverage that could have allowed exotic mammals to move into Patagonia. Besides additional rain would have provided the necessary water for them to bridge any small arid gaps.

See my post Here on a possible "aquatic route" from the Paraná River basin to the Colorado River in northern Patagonia - maps included.

When the arid conditions were restored after deglaciation, these tropical mammals may have remained isolated in Patagonia.

But, could these creatures, whose usual habitat is the very warm subtropical or tropical jungles in South America and South East Asia survive in the cold Patagonian climate?

And if they did, what kind of creature could they be?

Maybe we can look into this in future posts.

Bibliography

[1] Villagrán, C. and Hinojosa, L., (2005). Esquema Biogeográfico de Chile. In: Llorente Bousquets, J. and Morrone, J., [Eds.], (2005). Regionalización Biogeográfica en Iberoamérica y tópicos afines. Mexico: Ediciones de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Chap. 33. pp. 560+
[2] Secretaría de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable. Convenio sobre diversidad Biológica



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters