Fray Jorge Chilean Park

History and description

The National Park Fray Jorge (Chile) was created in 1941 with the finality of preserving the natural landscape, cultural traditions of this area, in addition of the development of scientific activities and ecotourism.
In 1977 it was declared ‘World Biosphere Reserve” by the UNESCO, mainly because of the existence of the Valdivien Humid Forest, an exceptional structure if you consider that it is located at the “norte chico” of this country.
Its singularity and extraordinary beauty, represents a real natural treasure and makes this place, the ideal locality for the observation of wild life and for the realization of scientific work or family spare time.

With a surface area of 9 957 hectares, the border on the south are marked by the north river-side of the Limarí river, on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the east side by two private domains : “el Salitre” and “el Arrayán”, on the north side by the domains of “el Arrayán” and “las Tórtolas”. The Fray Jorge Park has 4 ecosystems well defined: semi arid or semi desert climate, Valdivien Forest climate, estuary climate or “humedal” (mouth of the Limarí river), and the coaster climate.

In this semi desert region the annual pluviometer average is about 110 mm with the influence of the desert of the III Region, this hydrophilic forest survives since the quaternary period, this means that it represents what it was the Atacama desert at that time, the most arid desert of the world, at the last glaciered period about 30 000 years ago, when the humid forest were pretty far expanded to the southern areas and arrived even to the III Region where it existed once the well known forest of San Francisco at Copiapó.

This incredible valdivien forest had been going on thanks to the coastal fog named CAMANCHACA, that can register even over 1 000 mm/year, exclusively at the forest sector that makes about 70 or 80 hectares if you regroup all the forest fragments.