Chile said Saturday it is creating a vast national park to protect hundreds of glaciers that are melting due to climate change.

The new National Glacier Park will cover 75,000 hectares of Andes mountain land about 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the capital Santiago, President Sebastian Pinera said at a ceremony announcing its creation.

"We are managing to protect 368 glaciers," the president said.

These masses of permanent ice hold 32 times more water than a reservoir that serves the capital city's seven million people, the president added.

A recent study by the University of Chile said glaciers in the central part of the country, which includes the new park, are shrinking due to global warming.

Pinera said establishing the park is "a fundamental step that our country is taking to combat the destruction of nature."

It will also help preserve flora native to mountain terrain and animals likes pumas and foxes.

Chile is among the world's top 10 countries as measured by glacier surface area, the government says. Others include Canada, the United States, China and Russia.

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Melting glaciers, fast-disappering gauge of climate change
Aysen, Chile (AFP) Feb 23, 2022
A crack widens in the San Rafael glacier in Chile's extreme south, and a ten-storey iceberg crashes into the lake by the same name - a dramatic reminder of the impacts of global warming. In the lake San Rafael, about 100 icebergs float today, pieces broken off from the glacier that 150 years ago stretched out over two-thirds of the body of water now free of ice cover. The San Rafael glacier is one of 39 in the Northern Patagonian Ice Field (3,500 square kilometers or 1,350 square miles), which ... read more