Los Rios

Los Ríos exists because rivers exist—and because bureaucratic surgery carved it from Los Lagos in 2007. The region's name is literal: the Calle-Calle, Cruces, Valdivia, and other waterways define both geography and economy, with Valdivia at the confluence serving as capital. The Universidad Austral de Chile (founded 1954) provides institutional anchor, operating 4,100 hectares of forest land for teaching and research through its Faculty of Forest Sciences. But forestry here represents both economy and crisis: timber harvesting from radiata pine and eucalyptus drives regional GDP while 20,000+ hectares of native forest have been replaced by plantations in the last decade. The Valdivian temperate rainforest stores over 800 metric tons of carbon per hectare—one of the highest rates globally—making it a prime target for REDD+ conservation through Chile's first forest carbon project. The Nature Conservancy donated nearly 10,000 hectares to help create the Alerce Coastal National Park, protecting millenary forests containing some of Earth's oldest trees. Los Ríos demonstrates the carbon dilemma: the same forests that store massive carbon can be harvested for short-term timber revenue, making conservation dependent on carbon markets that value standing trees. By 2026, the region will either successfully monetize forest preservation or continue replacing native ecosystems with monoculture plantations—the biological equivalent of strip-mining genetic diversity for pulp.