These women are bringing Darwin’s rheas back to Chilean Patagonia.

Mongabay's video team traveled to Patagonia National Park in Chile to document a women-led group of rangers as they prepared and carried out the release of 13 Darwin's rheas (Rhea pennata) in April 2026. The rangers work with Rewilding Chile Foundation and, according to Mongabay, care for the birds around the clock while dealing with harsh weather, pumas, illegal livestock grazing and other pressures on the park's fragile ecosystem.

The park sits in the Chacabuco Valley, which was dominated by sheep and cattle ranching for more than a century. Fences cut up the open Patagonian steppe, and rheas nearly disappeared. Tompkins Conservation, the organization behind Rewilding Chile, bought former ranchlands and began removing thousands of kilometers of fencing so native wildlife could return.

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Staff described a long process. One ranger, who has worked at the park's Rheas Reproduction Center for 10 years, said each release takes almost a full year of work. The birds spend about two months acclimating before they go out, and this was the third release of the year. Because pumas are the main predator, the corrals use fences with an angle meant to make jumping in harder. Rangers also check that each bird is well fed and in good body condition.

On release day, the main worry was the weather, since the area has strong winds and sharp temperature swings. The team considered letting the birds go near guanacos, which rheas share the landscape with. Staff said they were anxious about stressing the animals while loading them into transport boxes. A group of students and their science teacher visited to watch. According to the team, the birds stayed calm once released, began grazing right away and soon moved kilometers from the site.

Speakers in the video pointed to signs of recovery. One said earlier surveys had estimated only around 11 to 15 individuals, and that few rheas were visible when they arrived in 2016. Since then, they said, more chicks have appeared and rheas and guanacos interact more often. Seeds found in rhea droppings led staff to view the birds as important seed dispersers for restoring the steppe. They also said fences remain a problem and that changes in local attitudes after a century of ranching take time. The page does not report how the released birds fared afterward.