Lessons of 15,000 Years of Human-Wildlife Interaction for Conservation in Patagonia in the 21st Century

Humans arrived in the Patagonia region of southern South America in the late Pleistocene period, ca. 15,000 years ago. A few centuries later, during a period of rapid warming, the megafauna went extinct in Patagonia, as well as some smaller species, like the guanaco (Lama guanicoe), in the southern portion of the region. As in other regions, extinctions probably occurred due to a combination of effects of climate and direct and indirect impacts of humans on wildlife communities. We reviewed recent archeological and genetic-based discoveries about numbers and distributions of humans and wildlife and their early interactions and used them to draw lessons for current debates among managers and scientists. Recent discoveries, for example, help us understand (1) the population limitation mechanisms and other interactions involving guanacos, livestock, forage, predators, and scavengers; (2) the magnitude of wildlife movements and the need for landscape-level planning for conservation; (3) the importance of indirect effects of human activities on wildlife communities; and (4) the compounded effects of human activities and climate change on wildlife. We believe these lessons drawn from deep time and recent history can help define new priorities for research and management and inform our conservation vision for the 21st century, a period when dramatic climate change impacts will add challenges to a region subject to a century of overgrazing and other anthropogenic pressures.