Breaking for the Huemul

A short recess from Substack. Here's why.

THERE IS A GREAT NEED for a major national park in central Chile, a region of extraordinary natural beauty and diversity. It is especially needed to save a very endangered population of huemul deer, estimated at fewer than 80 individuals. This small population is the last one surviving north of Patagonia (see map). Land development, urbanization, industrial projects, livestock presence, and roaming dogs continue to degrade, fragment, and destroy its habitat.

Fifty years ago, I began working with colleagues in Chile to protect that nation’s emblematic animal. I’m still at it. As a young guy in the 1970s, I was blessed with an extraordinary opportunity to pioneer field research on the species. My job was to locate surviving groups, investigate their habitat preferences, and figure out why they were disappearing. Later, I organized field teams to expand surveys for huemuls in both central Chile and Patagonia.

After a 6-year hiatus, I’ll return to Chile this December/January to meet with the regional governor, participate in a conference on protected areas, and explore measures that could be taken to establish a large national park. There’s some recent encouraging news on this front. Of course, I’ll also get back to a few of my old field sites. I’d like to ask huemuls one more question about their intriguing lives.

Map of Chile. In orange, the general location of the critically endangered Andean huemul in the Nevados de Chillán of central Chile. In gray, the range of .the Patagonian huemul, which occurs in scattered populations collectively classified as “endangered.” Originally, huemuls occurred along the Andes from just south of Santiago, Chile to the Straits of Magellan. (Google Earth Image)

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The huemul means a lot to me, as a real creature and symbolically. When you study a wild animal closely, you can quickly develop a personal attachment. It just takes a beautiful encounter or two.

By January 26, 1975, I had already spent weeks searching for the huemul in the Nevados de Chillán mountains of central Chile. I found no definitive tracks or other signs of the animal, and that was super disappointing. This was likely my last field day in the region, as it seemed futile to continue searching.

On that blazing summer afternoon, while descending a mountain and about ready to call it quits, I noticed an inviting patch of old-growth forest less than a mile away, situated just below a ridge to the north of me. So what the heck, I thought, why not go over there to cool off and enjoy that beautiful place before heading back?

I rambled down and across several nasty rock fields, through some horrendously dense brush, and, about an hour later, abruptly landed in a tall lenga forest carpeted with bedazzling orange-flowered Alstroemeria.

My brain was in high perceptual mode. About 50 feet away, a dark brown figure stood watching me, frozen in position. A long second passed before I realized that, in this dream-like place, right there — the darkest object on the forest floor — was an actual living huemul!

There was clearly a spiritual dimension to this event, foretold by an experience three years earlier, at a time when I found myself adrift in a river of thought on what’s next in life.

It occurred at the crack of dawn near the bottom of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. While in a half sleep, this feeling of a living presence overcame me. A deer, just a few feet away, learned toward me as I opened my eyes and reflexively gestured toward her. How wonderful and calming, I thought, while falling back to sleep.

I didn’t recall that experience until the time I was heading to Chile, a country I knew virtually nothing about, in search of an animal known to science as Hippocamelus bisulcus. It was 1974. Hardly a year had passed since the nation’s bloody military coup. A deer biologist in Colorado who had planned to go dropped out, apparently hearing news of ongoing violence. To make a long story short, I wound up going instead. I was a free-ranging graduate student in wildlife biology at the time, with, of all things, a masters degree in public health. Life offered a rare opportunity to study a large mammal that had not been studied before, under unusual circumstances.

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The huemul as totem: With it, I find wildness and hope. (Photo: T. Povilitis)

Huemul bucks tend to bond with does throughout the year, not just during the breeding season. They sometimes, but not always defend territories. (Photo: T. Povilitis)

Por La Razon o La Fuerza. By reason or force. The huemul (left) appears on the Chilean coat of arms, along with the Andean condor. It is a designated national monument in both Chile and Argentina.

Before saying hasta la leugo, here are few old-time images you might enjoy.

“In search of the huemul.” My field colleague Manuel Avilés (left) and I in the Nevados de Chillán of central Chile, 1975. (Photo: T. Povilitis)

Sr. Segundo Ocares, a local farmer who spotted huemuls in the early 1970s while out in the mountains collecting insects for an entomology professor. Though his encouragement and hospitality, I persisted, and undertook the first field study of the huemul. (Photo: anonymous through Macarena Sperry)

This is “the final possibility” to save the huemul in central Chile. In the late 1970s, Prof. Reyes become the first to publicly urge creation of a national park to protect the huemul in the Nevados de Chillán. He often invited me to give huemul talks to students and faculty. (Photo and article in the newspaper La Discusión 25 April 1976, Chillán, Chile)

A huemul female, pregnant and shedding her winter coat, in the Nevados de Chillán, early spring 1976. The huemul’s scientific name (Hippocamelus bisulcus) reflects an early belief that the animal was a small horse hippo or camel camelus, based on the appearance of an antler-less female specimen. (Photo: T. Povilitis)

“Isabel.” She opened my eyes to the complex social behaviors of her kind. Note the two scars on her right shoulder that allowed for positive identification. There is much behavioral variability among huemul does, including their degree of sociality and response to other females, males, yearlings, and fawns. (Photo: T. Povilitis, Rio Claro, Patagonia 1982)

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If you’d like to support my work, please consider upgrading your free subscription to paid (see button below). Or, you can donate to my non-profit organization, Life Net Nature. It sponsors Scale Down and currently undertakes wildlife research and conservation in Ecuador and Kenya.

On my way to Chile: here’s wishing you all a happy holiday season. Thanks for being here!

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Post Script: I’ve discovered some really good writers and thinkers here on Substack that also address Scale Down themes. Among my favorites are Elisabeth Robson and Kollibri Terre Sonnenblume. Check them out!

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