Description: This article offers comment by the author on the Patagonian Archipelago as the Final Frontier, as written about in a book by Matthew B. Martinic titled, 'Patagonia Archipelago. The Final Frontier.

Description: This article discusses field environmental philosophy and biocultural conservation. Abstract: Habitats (where we live), habits (how we live), and inhabitants (who we are) constitute an ecosystem unit. The biosphere is composed of a reticulate mosaic of these habitat-habit-inhabitant units, where humans (with their indigenous languages, ecological knowledge, and practices) have coevolved. Today, these diverse ecosystem units are being violently destroyed by the imposition of a single global colonial cultural model. In Cape Horn at the southern end of the Americas, educators, authorities, and decision makers do not know about the native habitats, language, and flora, and do not distinguish between Cape Horn's flora and the flora that grows in other parts of the country or the world. In contrast, indigenous people and old residents have a detailed knowledge, but they do not participate in education, and decision making. It is not Homo Sapiens in general, but bioculturally biased educators, authorities, and decision makers who need to be transformed into (educated and responsible) members and citizen of biocultural communities. The Omora Ethnobotanical Park educational program was launched to contribute to a biocultural citizenship involving three critical steps: (1) the disclosing of biocultural diversity with a "fine filter" approach that permits understanding ...

Description: This article is in a special issue of Environmental Ethics based on the workshop "Integrating Ecological Sciences and Environmental Ethics: New Approaches to Understanding and Conserving Frontier Ecosystems," held in the temperate sub-Antarctic region of southern Chile, in March 2007. The workshop was jointly organized by the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies of the University of North Texas (UNT) and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB-Chile), in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Philosophy, and followed a three-week field graduate course, "Conservation and Society: Biocultural Diversity and Environmental Ethics," involving graduate students from the U.S. and Latin America. These events built on a decade of collaboration between UNT environmental philosophers and Chilean ecologists, and were followed by two symposia held subsequently at two annual meetings of the Ecological Society of America (2007 and 2008).

Description: This article discusses building a Chilean network for long-term socio-ecological research. Abstract: Since their formal inception in 1980, long-term ecological research (LTER) programs have served as a successful organizing framework to create research agendas and funding mechanisms that allow scientists to address meaningful ecological phenomena at the scales they occur. In its 30 years of existence, LTER has expanded its geographic range (currently the International LTER network has more than 40 country members with sites on every continent) and disciplinary foci (principally encompassing the natural and social sciences and leading some to call for a name change to long-term socio-ecological research efforts exist in both Chile and Argentina, and in 2008, the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity launched Chile's first concerted effort to link three existing sites (Fray Jorge Forest National Park -33° S, Senda Darwin Biological Station - 43° S, and Omora Ethnobotanical Park - 55° S). Here, the authors present a special feature of the Revista Chilena de Historia Natural, dedicated to LTSER, with the aim of 1) providing a synthesis of some of the most emblematic cases of long-term socio-ecological research in Chile; 2) demonstrating the value of these efforts for the integration of research, education and ...

Description: This article discusses field environmental philosophy and biocultural conservation at the Omora Ethnobotanical Park. Abstract: In order to effectively address the problems derived from global environmental change, environmental scientists, citizens and decision-makers now recognize the need to integrate more fully the human or social component into ecological research. The authors propose that to achieve this integration, Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) networks offer an ideal platform, because such sites enable research at ecological, cultural, and political local scales, and at the same time allow addressing these issues at a global scale. However, this socio-ecological work still requires better articulation of programs developed at multiple geographic, ecological and political scales. In addition, until now the social component considered in LTSER programs has focused on economic factors, omitting ethical dimensions. A central reason for this omission is the lack of methodologies to systematically integrate ethics into LTSER programs. As a contribution to resolve this limitation, here the authors develop a methodological approach that the authors call "field environmental philosophy." It integrates ecological research and environmental ethics into biocultural education and conservation through an interrelated four-step cycle: i) interdisciplinary ecological and philosophical research, ii) composition of metaphors, and communication through simple narratives, iii) design ...