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Preserving South American Wilderness-by Buying It Up
The U.S. millionaire couple Douglas and Kris Tompkins have just donated two new national parks to Chile and Argentina. So why do so many people there wish they would just go home?
The answer is a complex blend of anti-American sentiment, local vested interests, and a cultural opinion gap on ecological philanthropy, the practice of buying up wilderness in order to save it. Local critics have vilified the couple as super-rich gringos who have joined Patagonia's land scramble along with other big-name foreigners, such as Ted Turner, George Soros, and Silvester Stallone. As Doug and Kris Tompkins have created 11 wilderness parks covering more than 800,000 hectares, they have been accused of being American spies, buzzed by Chilean Air Force jets, and even threatened with death.
Their story illustrates some of the successes and pitfalls of the buy/restore/conserve approach to saving wildlands, which has quietly grown into a multi-billion-dollar movement. As two of the movement's pioneers, they have learned an old lesson: how trying to do good can sometimes make enemies.
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"I bought the first piece of land almost whimsically, because it was so cheap and so beautiful," said a tanned, silver-haired Doug Tompkins, speaking in the airy loft of his organization's local headquarters at Puerto Montt in southern Chile. "That's where it all started."
During his business career, Tompkins created the outdoor clothing and equipment giant The North Face and cofounded the fashion chain Esprit. Kris Tompkins, his wife, was the CEO of outdoor-wear maker Patagonia. A life-long nature enthusiast, rock climber, white-water kayaker, pilot, and one-time Olympic skier, Doug Tompkins had repeatedly visited the rugged fjords of southern Chile since the 1960s and fallen in love with them. In 1989 the couple threw it all in, sold their corporate interests, and moved from San Francisco to the isolated region to live a simple lifestyle without electricity and in harmony with nature.
It is easy to see why the place so enchanted them. Densely forested slopes plunge from snow-capped volcanic peaks into icy waters. The mist-shrouded old-growth rainforest receives 6,000 millimeters of rain per year and shelters giant alerce trees that were already a thousand years old when Jesus walked the Earth. Once a common...