As you enter the forest, the air is cold and damp. The silence palpable and heavy. Making your way to the bottom of a ravine of wet earth, green leaves of different sizes and textures block out the sky. Every now and then, you hear the throb of hummingbirds, their feathers as green as the forest.
This is a sclerophyllous forest. They are characterised by vegetation with hard-textured, evergreen leaves, such as the peumo (Cryptocarya alba), boldo (Peumus boldus) and litre (Lithraea caustica) trees. Such forests are shaped by dry summers punctuated by seasons of heavy rainfall, which cultivates a typically Mediterranean ecosystem. But this forest is not in the Italian countryside – it is in central Chile.
The forest is vital for regulating local temperatures, storing carbon and providing firewood, fruit, medicinal herbs and other non-timber products to local communities. It also plays an important role in preventing natural disasters: during the rainy season, the forest acts like a sponge, preventing flooding, and in mountainous areas it helps prevent mudslides.
However, Chile’s sclerophyllous forests are threatened by climate change, fires and the expansion of agriculture and settlements. In 2025, Chilean researchers said they were on the brink of collapse, with about 40% at risk.
The overlooked forests
Chile is primarily known for its northern deserts and salt flats, and the wilds of southern Patagonia. Less discussed are the landscapes, flora and fauna endemic to its central region, which hosts one of the world’s five Mediterranean ecosystems.
Despite being relatively overlooked, sclerophyllous forests are deeply embedded in Chile’s collective imagination and culture. For example, the boldo’s leaves are used to make a tea that is beloved by grandmothers across the country for aiding digestion and protecting the liver.
According to figures from the Chilean National Forestry Corporation’s (Conaf) 2025 Vegetation Resources Survey, sclerophyllous forests account for 10.3% of the country’s native tree cover. They span a total area of approximately 1,200 km through one of the most densely populated areas of Chile. This region is considered a biodiversity hotspot, home to around 47% of the country’s endemic species, including elegant fat-tailed mouse opossums (Thylamys elegans) and long-tailed snakes (Philodryas chamissonis).
“This ecosystem combines three characteristics that make its protection urgent: it is highly diverse, it is poorly protected and it is one of the most threatened in the country,” Patricio Pliscoff, assistant professor of ecology at the Catholic University of Chile, explains to Dialogue Earth.
Another study by Chilean researchers, published in 2025, concluded that the forests’ vitality has declined, particularly in the north-central region of Chile. The total amount of leaves, branches, fallen bark, roots, fungi and microorganisms that make up these forests was found to have decreased. Almost 40% of the forest is classified as being at high or very high risk of permanent, fundamental change. Diego Cueto, a University of Chile natural resources engineer who took part in the research, tells Dialogue Earth these results are obvious to observers: “When you walk through the sclerophyllous forest, you can look up at the sky and see whether the leaves on the trees block your view.”
The reasons for decline are multiple. In central Chile over the past decade, wildfires and the threat they pose to this ecosystem have increased. “The sclerophyllous forest is particularly sensitive to fire,” explains Francisca Ruiz, a forestry engineer at the University of Chile.
Ruiz adds that the megadrought in Chile, which has affected the country’s Mediterranean zone over the past decade, has exacerbated the issue. Even in forest areas that have retained denser vegetation, rainfall has fallen by 49%.
In Mediterranean central Chile, land-use change between 1975 and 2008 – including agricultural and urban expansion – was a major driver of forest and shrubland loss, with vegetation change strongly associated with human land use. This was particularly the case for land with relatively lower gradients, or areas in close proximity to roads, according to a 2011 study.
Centuries-old trees
At the end of a steep cul-de-sac in the coastal municipality of Zapallar lives 81-year-old Israel Ramón Torres. Amid the sea air, his small house overlooks a green hill upon which a sclerophyllous forest stretches into the distance. “Don Monche”, as he has been nicknamed by his neighbours, describes himself as a “Zapallarino at heart”. He was born and raised in the area and spent his childhood surrounded by the forest’s green foliage.
Until a few years ago, he says, the relationship between the community of Zapallar and the forest was harmonious. “We’d go up the hill and collect firewood when trees fell over. The estate owners wouldn’t let us cut down the trees; we could only collect the wood once they’d fallen and dried out,” he explains. “My friends and I would also play there, swinging from the vines on the trees.”
It was around the 2000s that things began to change, Don Monche’s neighbours say, when property development began in parts of the forest.
An analysis by the University of Chile shows how, between the 1960s and 2001, urban development profoundly changed the Zapallar coastline. This development began to extend beyond the coastal road, encroaching on areas of sclerophyllous forest. According to the study, the pattern of urbanisation shifted from being compact and concentrated to dispersed and fragmented. As part of this process, planning evolved from a focus on traditional neighborhoods to concentrating on apartment blocks, gated private housing estates and second homes.
El Boldo de Zapallar
This encroachment is exemplified by plans tabled in 2001 to build 166 flats, a conference centre and a large hotel at the highest point of El Boldo hill, close to Zapallar. This was a major threat to the forest, but it would also prove to be a turning point in its protection.
Concerned about failures to comply with development plans, municipal authorities put the project to a local referendum. On 31 August 2003, citizens rejected the proposals and voted in favour of protecting the forests of Zapallar.
A group of 22 residents committed to purchasing the land. It was designated as a privately managed protected area and in 2010, the 65-hectare El Boldo de Zapallar park was opened. In 2017, the park was protected in perpetuity through a real right of conservation. This Chilean legal tool enables landowners to voluntarily protect the environmental heritage of a property. Such protection is vital for many of El Boldo de Zapallar’s ancient plants and trees, which require high humidity to thrive. Many are “critically endangered”, “endangered” or “vulnerable”.
Javier Marín, a young El Boldo park ranger, is one of a new generation of zapallarinos who are working to educate others about the sclerophyllous forest and the need to conserve it. He first visited the park as a member of the public before deciding to devote his energy to its conservation. “We need this forest,” he says, alluding to the ecological services the forest provides.
Marín is now completing a degree in wildlife management and leads trekking groups in the surrounding areas, with a focus on environmental education. His aim is to raise awareness of the forest’s treasure trove of endemic diversity: “I see that this perspective is lacking in the area, where the forest’s biodiversity is highly valuable yet little-known, and threatened by fires and property development.”
Carmen Rosa Ringeling, executive director of the park, points out that in recent years, social appreciation for the forest has grown significantly: “Previously, there was a lack of awareness of its ecological importance; today, the local community and visitors recognise its value in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services.”
The forest’s preservation is no coincidence, she adds, but “the result of the community’s efforts”.
An old poet of Zapallar, Javier Pérez de Ovalle, imagined the town caught between two worlds: “The ocean wants to carry it away, and the forest holds it fast.” That, he wrote, is why Zapallar is “part boat and part cabin”, belonging both to the sea and to the forested hills. The community effort that created El Boldo de Zapallar has helped ensure that one side of that delicate balance endures. But the sclerophyllous forest continues to face the growing pressures of fire, urban development and drought.
