On Tuesday, Argentine authorities confirmed that some 8,205 hectares of the Los Alerces National Park have been destroyed due to a wildfire, which has remained active for 20 days in the Cubut province.
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"The fire continues to be active, presenting specific areas of greater intensity, both at the head of the fire and on the flanks and back," according to the park's Unified Command and the Provincial Fire Management Service of the Chubut Forest Secretariat.
Some 336 firefighters and volunteers are currently working to extinguish the blaze at the park, known for its thousand-year-old larch field, and 52 more are expected to join the firefighting.
The blaze began on Jan. 25 when two fires broke out very close to each other near the Centinela stream. Judicial authorities have looked into the possibility of arson.
Founded in 1937, the Los Alerces National Park is located in the Andes mountain range in northern Patagonia and is bordered to the west by the border of Chile.
“The successive glaciations have configured its morphology with spectacular landscapes of moraines, glacial cirques and lakes with crystalline waters,” stated the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which included the Los Alerces National Park on the list of Natural World Heritage Sites.
"The park's vegetation is dominated by dense temperate forests and, at higher altitudes, mountain grasslands located beneath the rocky peaks of the Andes. This site is vital for protecting some of the last continuous parcels of virtually virgin Patagonian forest that are home to numerous species of flora and fauna, endemic or in danger of extinction," it added.
This Argentine park conserves larch forests, including an imposing 60-meter-high specimen called "Grandfather" that is estimated to be about 2,620 years old.