Patagonia's history of colonization and farming is a story full of sacrifices, hard work, hopes, and many unexpected challenges and setbacks. Estancia Laguna Amarga and the Goic family have a story that contains many of these elements, from hopes of a better life, sacrifices working in a hostile place, and a life-changing event when all the hard work literally disappeared in a thick layer of snow.
This is a story about a family that despite all odds, managed to go through all the obstacles they faced through three generations. Today, the family is facing new challenges with the latest worldwide pandemic where they, after 25 years break, decided to go back to doing sheep farming. A big surprise to many people since the estancia the last 6 years have been fully dedicated to the conservation of the Andean puma.
But this time the family is doing it with a more holistic approach where they are changing the way of managing sheep, co-existing with the wildlife. To understand the changes, we need to go back in time, to where it all started and put the story into a bigger context.
A livestock ranch of Patagonia's biggest meat exportation company
Estancia Laguna Amarga was one of the many livestock ranches that was part of the Sociedad Explotadora of Tierra del Fuego (SETF), the biggest and most important sheep farming company in Patagonia. It operated from 1893 until 1973, when the company, due to a new Chilean agrarian reform, got dissolved. When it all started in the late 1900 hundred, many European immigrants and families came to Chile with the hope of a better life, and many of them started to work in the sheep industry. Among these families that came from Europe was the Croatian Goic family.
When Chile implemented the agrarian reform, the land of the SETF was divided into smaller lots and put for sale. Families, mostly European immigrants that had been working as employees for the company, bought the estancias, and in 1976, the property of Estancia Laguna Amarga was bought by Mr. Juan Goic Arbunic and his wife, Olga Utrovicich Pavlov. The family continued using the estancia for livestock management, having more than 5,5000 sheep.
The conflicts between farmers and local wildlife
Sheep farming in Patagonia has never been easy, the soil isn’t as fertile as other parts of Chile with higher precipitation and warmer weather, requiring a thousand hectares to feed the sheep. The occupation of grassland started the first conflict with local wildlife, the guanaco. The guanaco, a relative of the llama, eats more or less the same as the sheep. So when the guanacos entered the grassland of the sheep, the sheep had less to eat, and the farmers began to hunt the guanacos. The number of guanacos decreased, which affected another local wildlife, the Andean puma.
With fewer guanacos to hunt, the puma started to hunt the more easy prey, the sheep. Loosing sheep to the hungry puma started the second conflict, where farmers now began to hunt and kill the puma. The numbers of pumas decreased these years, with thousands of pumas being killed all over Patagonia. Even though it is not legal to hunt pumas in Chile, it still happens today in and around many livestock ranches.
In a bigger picture, there have always been conflicts between men and animals of prey, from Africa with their lions, to the United States with their cougars and wolves. Sadly, there are very few stories where men and animals of prey have co-existed together.
The white earthquake that changed life for farmers
A life-changing event hit many of the local farmers back in 1995 where all their grassland got covered by a heavy layer of snow and temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius. The sheep didn't have anything to eat for days, and more than 80 percent of the livestock died, leaving the local farmers devastated as their business was taken away from them. Today, this winter is still referred to as the "Terremoto Blanco", the White Earthquake. With the loss of the animals, many farmers had to sell their properties and start a new life. The Goic family was one of the families that got affected too, losing most of their livestock to the snow. Despite the tragedy, the family decided not to sell their land, but dedicate their time to other types of activities, and continue with the small number of sheep that survived for their own use and consumption and not for business.
The human-made fires that burned down half the property
In 2005 a new misfortune happened, not only for the estancia but also for the neighboring national park, Torres del Paine. On the 17th of February, in the area of Laguna Azul (Blue Lagoon), a human-made fire started when a tourist accidentally collapsed a gas stove. Because of the strong wind, the fire quickly went out of control, burning down more than 14,000 hectares, whereas around 2,000 hectares of these were in the property of Laguna Amarga. Fortunately, none of the houses got affected, but many of the former fences burned. Today, you will see clean areas with no bushes, these are the areas that were affected by the fire.
The abandon of land and return of the puma
The White Earthquake was the landmark event that made the Goic family change their way of living. Most of their 7,000 hectares of grassland were left unused for more than 25 years, while the new generations, the children and grandchildren of Juan and Olga, were focusing their time on other activities not related to farming. This made a huge impact on local flora and fauna: the grassland recovered from both the fire and the use of livestock, and the wildlife returned to the area. Especially the puma, which for many years had been hunted in many nearby estancias during the time of SETF. Female pumas started to get cubs, and with the rising numbers of guanacos to hunt, the cubs grew up healthy and strong, to later grow up and get cubs as well.
Pioneers in conservation of the puma
During all these years, the neighboring national park, Torres del Paine, experienced more and more tourists each year, and one activity has grown popular the last 7 years: puma watching and photography. Many pumas were observed in the property of Laguna Amarga, and operators started to approach the family, wanting to work with them. Members of the family, Don Tommy and his daughters Daneska and Dania, decided to dedicate their time hundred percent to the pumas, working closely with professionals in developing puma-watching as a tour activity. Today, the property of Estancia Laguna Amarga, is without a doubt, the best place on Earth to find and observe the Andean Puma in its natural habitat and seen as the pioneer estancia within coexistence and conservation of the puma.
A new challenge for the family, the pandemic
Tourism in Patagonia was growing fast each year, and the same was the puma-watching and photography tours. The future looked positive, and the Goic family was putting all their energy into the business, helping to do puma tracking around the property. Then in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and from one day to another, the borders closed and with this, all the cancellations came, leaving the tour calendar empty. Once again, the Goic family saw their passion and their main livelihood disappear. Now, with the pandemic and the insecurity of whether tourism would recover or not, the family had to rethink their future. The daughters decided to go back to the root with the help of their father: reintroducing sheep farming again, but this time on different conditions.
The reintroduction of sheep farming
The two sisters got many questions from friends and operators when they started to buy sheep. Why would they reintroduce sheep in an area full of pumas? Some people even thought they bought the sheep to attract the puma and feed it. They brought in around 1,000 sheep from different areas of Patagonia for meat production. Rams have later been added for a period of time to impregnate the ewes with the hope that in springtime, they will get lambs. The sisters started out without any sheepdogs and no fences, which was a big challenge when trying to keep the sheep together. Later on, they got sheepdogs that are now their faithful companions when they are out, monitoring the sheep.
How the estancia co-existence with the puma
To avoid issues with the puma, the family has incorporated various practices, one being shepherding the sheep. When you shepherd livestock, you take them out of the coral in the morning, take care of them while they graze, and bring them back home to the corral in the night. This is a very well-known livestock management method in ranches where they don't use fences, but in Patagonia, most estancias have fenced their grasslands and therefore leave the sheep there without any human monitoring. The puma is normally active at early sunrise and late sunset, these times of the day are their hunting hours. To avoid meeting the puma in the most critical hours of the day, the sisters take out the sheep a bit later in the morning and bring them in a little earlier in the evening.
While shepherding, they are constantly monitoring the sheep: by using binoculars and radio, they are observing whether a group of sheep suddenly separates themselves from the main flock, and together with the sheepdogs, they bring them back to maintain an overview of the flock. At the beginning of their project, they did not have any fences, which made both their horses and their dogs work constantly because the sheep always tried to leave the area. The more they had to move around the sheep, the less time the sheep had to grass. They, therefore, decided to fence the main grassing area, so the sheep could grass peacefully. Not all areas are fenced, so they still have to go out with the sheep every day to make sure none of them escapes.
The use of guardian dogs to keep away the puma
Today, many estancias have introduced livestock guardian dogs, like the Italian Maremma or the Great Pyrenees. These dogs grow up together with the livestock and therefore develop a strong instinct to protect the animals. They live together with the sheep, so when they move, they move together with the sheep. If anybody, pumas, other dogs, or even humans try to approach the sheep, the livestock dogs will start barking and approach to scare the intruder. These dogs have shown very effectively in coexistence with the puma. As a natural feline instinct, the puma does not like being near the dogs, and will therefore avoid approaching the sheep to not get into any trouble. Many farmers have reported few to no losses since introducing the livestock guardian dog, and the family, therefore, decided to do the same. On the property, they have three Italian Maremmas that roam around with the sheep while they are grazing and stay with them in the corral during the night.
Conservation of grassland and holistic management
Of the 7,000 hectares of grassland, the estancia only uses 1,000 hectares for livestock. The rest is left for the conservation of wildlife and to continue making the area attractive for the puma. During the heyday of the farming industry, much grassland in Patagonia experienced erosion because of overgrazing. This is due to bad management of grassland, where the ground doesn’t get time to recover, and the animals start eating the grass roots.
To avoid over-grassing, the family is working with a more holistic management approach, where the grassland is divided into various smaller grass fields. This way, the sheep stay in a certain area for a couple of months, and before all grass and plants are gone, they are being moved to another field, for the previous grass field to recover. The corral where they stay overnight is mobile, so it is also being moved according to which grass field they are using. By shepherding the sheep on a daily basis, the sisters also have a better idea of the grass conditions and when it's time to move the sheep.
The future with the sheep
The family is still not sure what will happen with the sheep after the sheep have given birth to lambs. This year is a trial year for everybody to see how things are working. The initial idea was to buy older sheep, have them going through the mating season and when the lambs are being born, they will all be sold. Then leave the grass fields unused for three months or more, because having lambs and young sheep in a place with many pumas is a challenge. But everything depends on how things are going, like how many of the sheep will survive winter, how many will get lambs, and how the future looks in general for tourism. As for now, the family is dedicating their time to their sheep, as they say, it is a big sacrifice, but that is how life at a farm is, and the animals depend on them.
The sheep farming in an area with a lot of pumas is still in a trial phase where they are evaluating what works, and what doesn’t. If everything goes well at the end of the season, with a minimum of loss, that would be the future for livestock farming. The family hopes that their management approach will inspire other estancias that have conflicts with the puma by showing that it is possible to share terrain, but to avoid conflicts, there are certain measures that need to be taken. Especially for ranches near national parks, where there always will be traffic of wildlife, transiting in and out between private properties and national parks.
We are following their journey with excitement.
Outro: this article is made in collaboration with Dania and Daneska Goic, through conversations and taking part in both the puma-watching and the shepherding activities.