Biodiversidad y ecologia de los bosques costeros de Chile. 2019. illus. 617 p. - In Spanish.

In this (2019) joint edition between the Universidad de Los Lagos and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB), we present an updated version of the knowledge about the native forests of the Coastal Cordillera of Chile.

These forests are the oldest witnesses we have of the great geological and climatic changes that have occurred in the landscape of southern South America over millions of years. When the changes of the late Mesozoic, Tertiary and Quaternary slowly came to pass, diversity sought refuge in the old coastal mountain ranges. Forests, which once completely covered this mountainous territory, can now only be found as small remnants of native vegetation isolated from each other.

An exception is the cold forests that still cover part of the Coastal Range of the Los Ríos and Los Lagos regions. These remnants shelter an extraordinary biodiversity of ancient lineage, with great phylogenetic solitude, endemic either to the country or to the coastal forests themselves. Many of these species are only found in one or a few places in the Coastal Cordillera; if they are destroyed, they are lost forever. The coastal forests that survived major cataclysms are now threatened by our own ignorance and lack of incentives to conserve and recover them.