Patagonia / In the Medias

Originally published by Americas Program, Center for International Policy 

Originally published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution

Now that The New York Times - an international opinion leader - has taken a stand, your action to stop the dams will have much more impact. Please read the editorial and take action to help us in the fight to protect the Baker and Pascua rivers in Patagonia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/mar/14/patagonia.dam?page=all

http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=15728&topic_id=1

They love to raft down the Futaleufú River and fish in the Baker. They travel around the planet, looking for arenas to challenge those mega-projects that threaten the environment. Aaron Sanger, Jacob Scherr, Robert Kennedy Jr., Alan and Donald Weeden and Douglas Tompkins, among others, are building a million-dollar battle.

"I am going to coordinate the campaign to defend Patagonia from the US where this and the European market will be the focus," explains Aaron Sanger, the lawyer (50) from International Rivers Network that will lead the initiatives against the hydroelectric centers in Aysen.

After successfully leading an aggressive campaign in the the US against Chilean forestry companies, in 2003 the lawyer-environmentalist Aaron Sanger achieved an unprecedented agreement for protection of native forests with CMPC and Arauco. Four years later and in honor of this agreement - that moreover is valid and thanks to which more than 500,000 hectares of native forest have been protected in the country - Sanger wrote a letter to the president of CMPC, Eliodoro Matte, in which Sanger expressed his concern over the development of HidroAysen [project to dam Chile's Baker and Pascua Rivers], because it would require the clearcutting or inundation of thousands of hectares of native forest.

Opponents of a plan to build five large hydroelectric dams in Region XI are welcoming a new partner in their campaign to protect Chile's majestic, glacier-fed rivers in the southern Chile area known as Aysén.