Acigami

Acigami is one of the lakes in the Tierra del Fuego island.12,000 years ago, glaciers covered this entire region. In that time, the first peoples arrived on foot through paths bordering these ancient lakes before the rise in temperature of the Holocene melted a big part of the ice and formed these bodies of water. The lakes depend on the streams that flow down from glaciers that remained in the valleys of the Fueguian Andes. The climate crisis and the current unprecedented rise in temperatures threatens the existence of these glaciers. We might be the last generation to see them. Cirque glaciers in the peaks of the Fueguian mountains are an important source of water. They provide the people in cities like Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, with drinking water and they maintain the balance of peat bogs. These are crucial ecosystems that act as carbon sinks in our planet and need high humidity to exist. The bogs in Tierra del Fuego are unique because their layers of peat have been forming uninterruptedly for more than 10,000 years. During 8,000 years prior to the arrival of settlers and their genocidal campaigns, the Selk’nam people lived freely in Tierra del Fuego and co-existed with the peat bogs. Despite suffering planned and systematic physical extermination and cultural dismantlement, their descendants resist the disappearance of their knowledge which can teach the world how to take care of biodiversity and unique ecosystems like those in the Patagonia region.