While Chile has an impressive roster of national parks, reserves, and monuments, covering a remarkably large area, it has been criticized for not doing more to conserve environmentally significant areas close to population centers, especially when conservation conflicts with established economic interests such as forestry and mining.

The main conservation agency is the Corporación Nacional Forestal (Conaf, National Forestry Corporation), which manages the Sistema Nacional de Áreas Silvestres Protegidas (Snaspe, National Protected Areas System). Within Snaspe, Chile has three principal categories of protection: parques nacionales (national parks), reservas nacionales (national reserves), and monumentos naturales (natural monuments). In addition, Chilean law allows the establishment of reservas naturales privadas or santuarios de la naturaleza, private nature reserves of which there are only a few as yet.