Humans have been reshaping the Earth for centuries – so much so that our distant ancestors would struggle to recognize many of the landscapes we know today.

One such example is the Argentine Espinal, a once heavily forested region that has been largely transformed into farmland and cattle ranches.

In this story, two young Argentine conservationists explain their quest to reconnect with this long-forgotten landscape and help their local community rediscover its roots.

Escaping the concrete jungle

By Ana Lund Petersen, Fundación Monte Alegre (GLFx Espinal Córdoba)

My name is Ana. Since my childhood, I’ve sought refuge in nature. 

Growing up in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, that longing rarely found relief: I could only glimpse the open sky from the highway, or let my gaze stretch toward the horizon when visiting the Río de la Plata.

While humid and green, the city was nevertheless covered in concrete, where life survived in fragments, almost hidden.

And so, I decided to move to the countryside. The Province of Córdoba welcomed me with dry, windy air and long rainless winters. Its landscape seems to be asleep until the first drops of rain arrive – then, life suddenly bursts forth in a matter of days. 

Before moving here, I had heard that forests were abundant in this province. But to my surprise, what dominated the region were not natural forests but croplands of soybeans, corn and wheat. 

These plains, once vibrant ecosystems have been transformed into agricultural land due to the fertile soils and favorable climate. 

I also learned that the few ‘forests’ surrounding the towns were actually degraded woodlands, now occupied by invasive vegetation.

Each time I visited the countryside, a new search began: where could I still find a bit of native forest? It was on those walks that I decided I would work to restore Córdoba’s native forests. 

The history of the Espinal

By Analí Bustos, Fundación Monte Alegre (GLFx Espinal Córdoba)

My name is Analí, and I was born in the Espinal landscape – in a territory that had already long been deeply transformed. 

It was through study and scientific knowledge that I came to understand how extensive the Espinal forests once were and how profoundly they had been altered over time. 

Once I grasped the scale of the loss that led to the landscape in which I grew up, I started to think about restoration and rebuilding a more balanced relationship between people and land.

Life in this region once followed a slower, more grounded rhythm, one shaped by the pulse of the Earth itself. The Comechingón and Ranquel peoples, and later the criollo communities, lived in deep harmony with the land through small-scale farming, herding and gathering. 

Guided by the changing seasons, they cultivated a deep sense of belonging to the places that sustained them, reading the language of the soil, the winds and the stars.

Throughout the 19th century, including during the Campaña del Desierto (“Conquest of the Desert”), the Argentine military displaced and killed thousands of Indigenous Peoples across the country.

Then, new settlers moved in, bringing with them new models of land ownership and production that transformed Argentina’s landscapes forever.

Over the decades, and especially since the 1980s, traditional practices gave way to an industrial, highly mechanized form of agriculture that reshaped both land and our relationship with it.

Fields turned into vast monocultures with grain factories stretching into the horizon, displacing local communities.

Rural depopulation followed, driven by the loss of livelihoods and the illusion of better opportunities in the cities. This exodus created a deep cultural rupture, eroding the emotional bond people once had with the land and making it increasingly difficult to protect the last remnants of our forests.

Urban residents continue to have difficulty accessing nature. Most land in Argentina is privately owned, and the few remaining green spaces, such as parks, serve a large population. 

Yet we cannot deny the interdependence between humans and nature: our food, water, air and even emotional well-being depend on the health of the ecosystems that sustain us. 

Every action we take reverberates through the web of life, reminding us that protecting wild spaces isn’t just an act of conservation but also one of self-preservation. 

Recognizing this deep connection may be one of the most powerful ways to awaken collective awareness and inspire care for the living world.

Ecological restoration and environmental education open paths toward recovering another way of seeing: one that doesn’t reduce nature to goods and services but instead recognizes it as the living fabric we belong to.

We shape our environment, and the environment shapes us.  As the American ecologist and ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan once said: “There will be no repair, no restoration, without re-story-ation.” 

Restoring the bond between people and the Espinal

By Ana Lund Petersen and Analí Bustos

For decades, the Espinal forest has been forgotten under extractivism and agribusiness. Today, children, parents and grandparents no longer recognize the Espinal as part of their identity, because they never knew these forests before they were degraded. 

At the heart of our current metacrisis lies a disconnection shaped by education, politics and culture, which have taught us to see nature as a resource instead of the living web we belong to. 

Restoring this relationship means restoring ourselves, our cultural memory and our humanity. Only through reciprocity can we regenerate ecosystems and rebuild communities capable of inhabiting the Earth with a shared sense of belonging and responsibility. 

We began working with Fundación Monte Alegre with a shared purpose: to restore the Espinal forest and people’s relationships to it. 

Our organization focuses on the ecological and social restoration of the Espinal – one of the most threatened native forests in Argentina. 

We do this by collaborating with local communities, schools, local producers, volunteers and families who visit the Monte Alegre Nature Reserve, which is both a recovering forest and outdoor classroom. In 2025, we welcomed more than 500 students – many of them seeing the forest for the first time.

So, what does it look like to restore people’s relationship with the Espinal?

Today, more families and landowners in the region are beginning to protect native vegetation and to plant species native to the Espinal. Teachers tell us that their students return home wanting to ‘bring the forest back.’ 

Emotional reconnection is an ecological tool: when people feel the beauty and power of the forest, they want to protect it. When they understand the history of the Espinal, they become part of rewriting its future.

We work from the understanding that biodiversity and culture are inseparable. Languages, stories, land use practices, children’s drawings of the forest and elders’ memories of gathering native fruits all form a single living web. 

That doesn’t mean everything must necessarily return to the past; our world is constantly changing. However, the memories and the traditional and scientific knowledge of the landscapes we inhabit must become fertile ground for reimagining social and ecological systems to put life at their center.

Every walk, every collective planting, every school visit becomes a doorway back into harmony with nature. Identifying a bird, recognizing a plant by its scent, listening to an ancestral story – these are all forms of restoration.

Restoring the Espinal means reweaving ecological and cultural memory.