A decade-long quest to protect the world’s largest tropical glacier

Experts from Conservación Amazónica told Mongabay Latam that the urgency to approve Ausangate stems from the appearance of another request for a mining concession that overlaps with the conservation area.

Plans for the Regional Conservation Area of Ausangate

The consultation process finished in March this year with just two towns agreeing to join the conservation area: Sallani and Phinaya. The final proposal for the conservation area suggests an extent of 810 square kilometers (310 square miles), including the Quelccaya Ice Cap and Lake Sibinacocha.

Those pushing the initiative are hopeful that in the future other towns will join in. “In the [Regional Conservation Area of] Tres Cañones we had a similar case two years after the creation of the area. The communities that at the time were not convinced to join now want to be integrated,” Canal said.

The proposal for the Ausangate conservation area’s creation is scheduled to be submitted to Peru’s National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (SERNANP) in August to begin the approval process. The regional government hopes it will be approved this year.

Chuquichampi, Bermúdez and the more than 600 residents of the two participating towns look forward to the same thing. It’s been years of process with no tangible result. “At the start, when we were listening to the government officials, I thought nothing they said would go anywhere,” Bermúdez said.

In the meantime, fear of the advances of legal and illegal mining around them persists. “The government prioritizes mining, that’s why we didn’t have much hope,” Bermúdez said. Then came the conservation area proposal.

“Then we got excited because we thought that maybe with this finally they’d pay attention to us, they would remember we exist. It will be harder for miners to come in without consulting us,” he said. There is an ingrained feeling among locals that they are not part of wider Peruvian society. However, since the process of creating the conservation area began, they have been feeling closer to the rest of the country.

The regional government of Cusco is aware of that, which is why it’s committed to helping and advising the towns on important projects, such as improving the breeding and care of vicuñas and alpacas. Phinaya and Sallani alone are home to 9,500 vicuñas of the 17,500 that live in the region, according to Bermúdez, who was recently named president of the Association of Breeders and Conservationists of Vicuñas in Cusco (ACRIVIR).

“We plan to have an interpretative center for the South American camelid to tell the world about it and about what we do,” he said. “When the [conservation area] is in place, we would like help to improve our production through genetic enhancement.”