Conservation

Alberto Villegas. Image courtesy of Alejandro Villegas.

Chile

Alberto Villegas knew Chile’s flowering desert as a herder and protected it as a ranger

For much of the year, Llanos de Challe National Park is dry and sparsely colored. Cacti rise from gravel and bare hillsides. Seeds remain underground, sometimes for years. After sufficient winter rain, flowers cover parts of the coastal desert in white, yellow, violet, and red. Most visitors arrive during the

Fernando “Pino” Rubio del Valle. From Rubio del Valle's Facebook page.

Peru

Fernando “Pino” Rubio del Valle was a stubborn defender of Peru’s forests

In the late 1970s, a group of young naturalists in Lima used a room in the Rubio family home as a headquarters for their expeditions. They called it the Gabinete de iconoclastas. There were maps to study, frogs to look for in neighborhood ponds, plants to collect, and places along