Name: Maria Soledad Lindner
Country: Argentina
Site: Peninsula Valdes
What is your personal relation to the marine WHS you represent?
My personal relation with Península Valdés has their philosophic roots in the conservation biology, understanding it with a holistic conception. I’ve developed a deep relation with the area by means of the study of one of the most charismatic species, the southern right whale. The conservation needs of an emblematic specie of our marine ecosystem, forces to worry us about the whole environment with an integral point of view and attitude. So, I’ve developed a profound relationship with the environment, local people, tourists and authorities. I think that only if we work together, and with synergic efforts of all the actors, we can achieve the preservation of a unique place all over the world.
What are the specific problems and threats of your marine WHS?
- Absence of effective protection of the representative ecosystems
- Absence of local population growth control
- Absence of inter jurisdictional coincidence to the marine ecosystems protection
- Lack of feeding areas protection of Península Valdés’s fauna (problems with the industrial fisheries)
- Increasing risk of whales and marine mammals boat’s collisions
- Uncontrolled use of resources
- Potential desertification
- Spillage of Oil risk
- Pollution risk
- Poaching and control hunting without species population research
- Difficult private fields control
- Vulnerable areas without delimitation and protection
- Inadequate tourist model
- Uncontrolled and massive tourist revenue
- High concentration of tourist in the same period of time
- Lack of a whole understand of the protected area concept between the general community, civil servants and investors
- Absence of an environmental tourist conscience
- Not enough training, managing conscience and resources protection
Why do you think is it important to safeguard your marine WHS?
Península Valdés’s conservation is an imperative because it’s a natural habitat that contains a wide biodiversity of marine-coastal species with a high universal value. It’s a regional, national and international icon. It is the reproduction and feeding area of a lot of marine mammal’s species (like whales, dolphins, elephant seals and sea lions). San José and Nuevo Gulf are an appropriate area to the reproduction of the southern right whales. Here is the unique continental colony of elephant seals of the world, and the orcas have developed an exceptional hunting technique. The peninsula also has a great variety of birds. And the patagonic steppe, the typical ecoregion of the area, has a large biodiversity of flora and terrestrial mammals.
Península Valdés is also a paleontological patrimony. The vertebrate and invertebrate fossils found here had contributed to increase the biodiversity knowledge of the area and the world.
Preserving this patrimony is a responsibility of everyone who uses the area, and its conservation is a right of all inhabitants of the world.