A year ago, a forest fire devoured Chile’s largest botanical garden. With the start of summer in the southern hemisphere, this century-old park began to adapt by planting thousands of native, less combustible trees.
Ninety percent of the 400 hectares of the Viña del Mar National Botanical Garden, 120 km northeast of Santiago, was consumed by fire in one of the deadliest forest fires of the last century.
Its director, Alejandro Peirano, is preparing for a return of the flames. “We’re going to have a fire no matter what. We’re clear about that,” he stated, under one of the trees that survived the flames.
But in the face of a new season of forest fires that authorities predict will be intense due to rising temperatures, the park began to prepare to better deal with the fire. He installed a new “battle line” with native trees from Mediterranean climate forests, such as litre, quillay and colliguay.
“The idea is to put the species that burn slower, in front of the battle line (…) so that the fires, which are going to occur, do not advance so quickly,” says the director of the Botanical Garden.
Forest fire resistant tree project
The heat and intense gusts of wind on the day of the fire, February 2, 2024, in the middle of the southern summer, quickly spread the flames also through hills and populated villages in Viña del Mar, and left a total of 136 dead and 16,000 homeless.
Designed in 1918 by the French architect Georges Dubois, the park had 1,300 species of plants and trees, including mountain cypresses, Chilean palms and Japanese cherry trees. It was home to a wild fauna of marsupials, gray foxes, Chilean ferrets, as well as many birds. Some of its trees came from seeds that resisted the atomic bomb of Hiroshima in 1945.
Fire barrier
On one of the slopes of this park, dozens of volunteers began weeks ago to reforest 5,000 specimens of native trees in an area of eight hectares. Among dry grasslands, the seedlings grow attached to a plastic structure and receive water through a technical irrigation system. In two more years their roots will establish themselves and the foliage will be large enough to generate shade and cause the regrowth of other species around them.
Forest fire resistant tree project
It is part of the first stage of a plan to revive this garden in a public-private partnership. The park is also expected to be reforested with species capable of adapting to “the scarce rainfall and prolonged drought,” says Benjamin Veliz, director of the NGO Wild Tree, which is also involved in the plan to revive this garden.
While the trees grow, firebreaks are also being built at the park’s boundaries and its ravines are being cleared, removing dry vegetation and rubbish that feed the fire.
Unlike eucalyptus, an exotic species that burns quickly, some native trees are able to cope with or contain the flames for longer, according to research from the Federico Santa Maria Technical University (USM).
“We have experimentally demonstrated that quillay and litre are less flammable than eucalyptus and pine,” introduced species, Fabian Guerrero, a researcher from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at USM, said.
The studies have focused on determining the characteristics of different tree species, to determine which are less combustible. The chosen ones are “low-flammability species so that a kind of barrier can be created against the fire and prevent its spread,” says Guerrero.
In the February fire, the firefighters and brigade members could do little or nothing. The fire advanced without containment and consumed the park in less than an hour.
The caretaker of the greenhouse, two grandchildren, and her mother who lived with her in a house inside the compound died trapped by the flames. The authorities arrested three former firefighters and brigade members suspected of having intentionally caused the fire.
Rebirth
The abundant rains that were recorded in 2024 in central Chile — affected by more than a decade of drought — have helped the recovery of the Botanical Garden. There are tree shoots everywhere. Eucalyptus, but also litres and peumos show the insistence of nature.
“These trees that burn come back, because the sclerophyllous forest (typical of Mediterranean climates and resistant to summer droughts) has a good reaction after fires,” says the director of the garden.
