King Penguin Nature Reserve Flora: criteria and narratives as a proposal for selecting charismatic plants

Abstract

The King Penguin Nature Reserve (KPNR) in Bahía Inútil (Strait of Magellan, Chile), protects the only King Penguin nesting colony (Aptenodytes patagonicus) that exists in Chile, and represents one of the most visited ecotourism resources in Chilean Tierra del Fuego Island. The vegetation in the area is dominated by the Patagonian steppe, a desert landscape where tiny plants stand out, with showy flowers and whose food, ritual and medicinal use was well known by the hunter-gatherer Selk’nam people. Despite the important milestone that the KPNR represents, the tourist information offered there is restricted to the King penguin, omitting the potential narratives that can be elaborated from the vegetal landscape and ethnographic memory. In this study, the vascular flora of the KPNR was inventoried, and an exhaustive review of scientific literature was carried out to evaluate the potential of this biodiversity in the elaboration of a complementary narrative for ecotourism. On the basis of aesthetic, ecological, distributional, ethnobotanical and historical criteria, 12 of the 85 registered species were selected for the preparation of narratives. In this study, we propose that the selected criteria may be useful to elaborate a story, but the quality of the content will depend on the available scientific research. Also, we suggest that narratives integrating charismatic plants, their ethnobotanical uses, ecological and historical context, can be complementary tools to improve the contents of ecotourism in the KPNR, interpreting the natural history of the area and thus, enrich the visitor’s experience for a better knowledge of a heritage until now, undervalued.