Corcovado National Park: Chile’s Wilderness Jewel

Shimmering lakes. Snow-capped mountains. Primeval forest where pumas haunt the shadows. Free-flowing rivers that race to the sea. This is Chile's Corcovado National Park, one of the last great wilderness areas on Earth. Rising above it all is the Corcovado volcano, whose striking form has been a landmark for travelers along the Pacific coastline in southern Chile for centuries. Modern visitors to the region have called the mountain, "the Matterhorn of South America."

In Corcovado National Park, renowned landscape photographer Antonio Vizca no captures the beauty and diversity of a magical setting almost un¬touched by modern humans. Designated in 2005 by President Ricardo Lagos, the park was born of an innovative public-private collaboration spurred by the largest-ever donation of private land to Chile's system of protected areas. With a foreword by Lagos and essays by other principals in the park's creation, Corcovado National Park explores the natural wonders of an extraordinary place and tells the stories of the conservationists who made certain it would remain a bastion of wild nature held in trust by the Chilean people for future generations.