At the end of the 19th century, the American naturalist John Bell Hatcher traveled through the valleys of the northern Santa Cruz and left one of the most detailed accounts of the huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus) in the wild.
In his 1898 diary, he recounted having observed entire groups in the Cañadón Caracoles, the Pinturas River, and the surroundings of Lake Pueyrredón. “I was not surprised to see them so far from the mountains nor in an area without forests,” he wrote, as if confirming a common scene.
A past documented in stories and landscapes
Other explorers confirmed that presence. In 1900, Hesketh Prichard hunted huemuls between the Los Antiguos and Jeinimeni rivers, and even then, the indigenous peoples warned about their scarcity. In 1902, the Boundary Commission sighted deer in the Cañadón del Deseado, and decades later, archaeologist Carlos J. Gradín, along with Miguel Ángel Sugo, recorded accounts of huemuls in Charcamata, at the foot of the Pinturas River.
“Those citations are gold,” says Sebastián Di Martino, director of Conservation at Rewilding Argentina. “They show that the huemul was not just a mountain animal: it also inhabited the steppe, far from the forest, in the same canyons we know today.”
The most surprising thing is that the landscape described by Hatcher remains almost intact. Comparisons between his photographs from over a century ago and current ones of the Cañadón Pinturas reveal that the vegetation, light, and slopes are still the same. Only a few exotic willows slightly alter the scene.
Causes of disappearance: more human than natural
The huemul, now considered the most threatened deer in the American continent, disappeared from these valleys not due to environmental changes, but because of human pressure.
The extensive livestock farming displaced wild herbivores, introduced diseases such as brucellosis and foot-and-mouth disease, and generated direct competition for food. “The rifle did the rest,” summarizes Di Martino. “It was a tame, trusting animal. It took little for it to become extinct in this entire region.”
The possibility of return: science, memory, and territory
Currently, the closest populations survive in the Perito Moreno National Park and in the Patagonia Park Chile. On the Argentine side of the Patagonia Park, the huemul is no longer present, but the historical, archaeological, and cultural evidence confirms that the canyons of northern Santa Cruz were part of its ancestral territory.
On the walls of the Cueva de las Manos, among figures of guanacos, choiques, and humans, there also appear silhouettes that could represent huemuls. “The presence of the huemul is in the memory of the landscape, in the stories, and in the stones,” says Di Martino. “The environment is intact. We are missing the huemul.”
Rewilding: an opportunity to reconcile with nature
The story of the Father David’s deer, an Asian species extinct in the wild and reintroduced thanks to specimens bred in captivity, shows that species recovery is possible when the environment allows it. In the northwest of Santa Cruz, that condition is met.
Recovering the huemul in these valleys is not just a scientific goal: it is an act of ecological and cultural restoration. As in other regions of Patagonia where rewilding projects are being tested, the desire for its return is also a gesture of reconciliation with the land. In these windy valleys, where time seems to stand still, there is still a place waiting for it.
