Valdivian Temperate Rainforest

The Valdivian Temperate Rainforest is a temperate rainforest ecoregion along the Pacific coast of southern Chile and adjacent parts of Argentina, one of the few extensive temperate rainforests in the Southern Hemisphere. Fed by heavy year-round rainfall off the Pacific, it supports dense forests of southern beech and ancient conifers, including alerce trees that number among the oldest living organisms on Earth, along with an unusually high proportion of plant and animal species found nowhere else. Its isolation from other rainforest regions has made it an important refuge for relict species descended from the ancient supercontinent Gondwana's once much wider forests.