Even at the uttermost ends of the Earth: how seabirds telecouple the Beagle Channel, Patagonia

PIZARRO, J. CRISTÓBAL; RAYA-REY, ANDREA; HUETTMANN, FALK

Baltimore

Simposio; Annual US-IALE symposium; 2017

US - International Association for Landscape Ecology

Human-wildlife dynamics exhibit novel characteristics in the Anthropocene, given the unprecedented degree of globalization that has increased the linkages between habitats and people across space and time. This is largely caused by transnational mobility and migration, international labor, resource markets and trade. Understanding the relationship between humans and wildlife, and their associated telecoupling processes, helps us to promote better management practices and governance for reconciling socio-economic and conservation interests. In this study, we review human-seabird interactions in the iconic Beagle Channel (BC) in southern Patagonia. Then, we adapted and employed the coupled human and natural systems(CHANS) approach and telecoupling framework to integrate disparate social and biological information. This allows us to obtain a more holistic understanding of current human-seabird dynamics and trends in the BC. While our assessment includes the temporal scale of human-seabird relationships, we centered the CHANS and telecoupling analysis on the modern seabird-tourism interaction, focused on the Argentine portion of the channel, where tourism is most heavily developed. Our synthesis in the BC telecoupled CHANS allowed us to recognize the strong historical local-to-global interactions between both human and natural subsystems and the sharp increase in distance telecoupling during the 20th century. Despite this globalizing trend in connecting the BC to distant places, ironically we found few linkages between Argentina and adjacent Chile, despite both countries sharing political sovereignty over the channel. Recognizing and studying the telecouplings identified in this study could help multi-lateral efforts to incorporate the spillover systems (especially with Chile) and sending systems (i.e. transnational tourists? countries of origin) into existing regional policies and a better global alternative (e.g., ecosystem services payment). Integrating these scales into our study and management of the BC would help ensure that humans continue to enjoy this unique and charismatic wildlife and at the same time reinforce responsible tourism as a local-global strategy for sustainable development and global conservation.