They again reject ECMPO that impacted salmon farming

The Regional Coastal Edge Use Commission (Crubc) held a new session yesterday – which lasted almost five hours – in order to respond to the appeal presented by the Huilliche communities Antünen Rain and Pu Wapi, after the rejection of the requests for the Coastal Maritime Space of Native Peoples (ECMPO) in the last session, Huichas and Cisnes Islands.

And the response was a large majority: including government entities, mayors and private individuals, this appeal was rejected, with solid arguments where, mainly, it was made clear that the extension of ECMPO is disproportionate to the number of people who requests them, customary use is not observed either and it also affects the productive activities of the Aysén Region with misuse of the Lafkenche Law.

It is worth remembering that the requests from ECMPO Islas Huichas and Cisnes, which covered more than 621 thousand hectares of coastal border in the communes of Guaitecas, Cisnes and Aysén, were rejected by a large majority in the commission on February 24, which motivated the groups to present an appeal to insist on the discussion of the petition.

In his presentation, the mayor of Cisnes, Francisco Roncagliolo, was emphatic: the aforementioned Huilliche indigenous communities support their requests “on a fallacious whim of discriminatory treatment,” the above “only because the Crubc rejected their request.”

While the regional councilor, Jorge Sepúlveda, directly accused “extortion to do business with the ECMPO” by the claimants. “When they say that they will obtain it by hook or by crook, are they talking about terrorism, attacks? And it is important to indicate that they are supported by million-dollar NGOs.”

Loreto Seguel, executive director of the Salmon Council, indicated that in the process of both ECMPO, the instances of dialogue were insufficient and also inadequate, as were the arguments of Conadi. Likewise, the requests overlap with other areas linked to conservation, being a disproportionate extension, generating a risk of social conflict with other coastal activities such as aquaculture and fishing: all the problems of what was previously rejected remain.

Tomás Monge, Territorial Director of SalmonChile, stated that the complaint does not add new information, and there are no factual or legal errors in it. And looking at the ECMPO, a big problem is caused, in his opinion: they overlap, for example, national reserves. “Does the management plan of the ECMPO or the national reserve prevail?” At the same time, in the administration, the will of the owner prevails, paralyzing different productive activities. In fact, he denounced that they are only opposing the aquaculture industry, which is outside the spirit of the Lafkenche Law.

For their part, the representatives of indigenous peoples warned that they will continue to insist on these ECMPOs, going to other judicial instances. And later, the Governor of Aysén Andrea Macías was in favor of approving the request with modification, but since the communities did not give an alternative in their appeal, she abstained from the vote.