Torres del Paine, Chile Photograph by Hessberg and Schulze   Southern South America: Southern Argentina and Chile Temperate Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands   24,400 square miles (63,200 square kilometers) -- about the size of West Virginia Vulnerable

· Pull Out Your Parka
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Pull Out Your Parka

To visit the Patagonian Grasslands ecoregion, you’ll have to bundle up for a near-arctic climate, where temperatures remain low--often below freezing--year round. You might want to grab a scarf, too, as the winds can be rough and wild. Visiting the entire ecoregion would be quite a trip, starting near the tip of the southern cone of Argentina, extending northward across eastern Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Gallegos just above the Straits of Magellan, and then by boat over to the Falkland Islands.

Special Features

Visitors here experience a wonderful variety of habitats, including tundra grasslands in the north, high-latitude Andean meadows in the central portion, deciduous thickets along the southern extremes, and swamp forests on the Falkland Islands. The topography is abrupt in the north and west, where the ecoregion borders the southern Andes, and then becomes more gentle in the rolling hills, bogs, and valleys of the remaining areas. An extensive coastline is an important component of the Falkland Islands.

	Living farther south than any other armadillo, the piche burrows into the ground for shelter and to hibernate during winter. This little hairy armadillo anchors itself in its burrow with the edges of its armored carapace (shell) for protection.

Wild Side

As you travel through the natural areas, notice that the plant communities are dominated by tuft grasses and intermixed with cushion plants and thickets. The ecoregion is rich in bird life and is home to a number of interesting mammals. You may see a large ostrich-like bird, the lesser rhea, walking across the tundra-like landscape through tufts of Poa grass. Andean condors and red-backed hawks often take advantage of thermal air currents, soaring above huemul (medium sized deer) and pudu pudu (small deer) browsing in the meadow below. Be alert--a young cougar crouching behind a rock outcropping may be stalking a small hairy armadillo, or piche, that wanders by. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a group of guanacos (wild llama relatives) roaming among the grasslands. Along the jagged coastline, keep an eye out for kelp geese wading among the tide pools in search of fresh seaweed, and large kelp gulls flying overhead on the lookout for eggs in abandoned nests among the rookeries. Once you reach the Falkland Islands, you’ll see that the coastal areas teem with five species of penguins--king, gentoo, rockhopper, macaroni, and Magellanic--as well as cormorants, petrels, and sea lions.

Cause for Concern

Much of the natural areas here have been converted to agricultural lands, and many exotic mammals that have been introduced, such as cattle, sheep, European rabbits, and Asiatic spotted deer, are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem as they overgraze the fragile grasslands.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.