A MAN ON A MISSION IN PATAGONIA

In 1968, two Californian dudes, Yvon Chouinard and Douglas Tompkins, and three friends, drove a VW Kombi all the way to Peru where they surfed, then on to Patagonia, to climb the needle-shaped Mount Fitz Roy. The trip was made into one of the coolest adventure travel films ever made, Mountain of Storms. It also inspired a legacy of extraordinary enterprise and conservation.

Tompkins would become rich through his North Face and Esprit clothing firms. At the end of the 1980s, he sold his businesses to focus on “deep ecology”. Chouinard founded Patagonia Inc (which recently announced that all its profits would benefit the planet).

Kristine McDivitt Wear, Patagonia Inc’s CEO, married Tompkins in 1993. After relocating to South America, they launched a series of NGOs to purchase large swathes of wilderness. Their projects have protected millions of acres of threatened ecosystems. They have created or expanded 15 national parks and, most recently, spearheaded rewilding in Chile and Argentina.

In 2015, Doug died while kayaking in Lake General Carrera. Kris Tompkins is busier than ever with projects and campaigns.

PUMALÍN DOUGLAS TOMPKINS NATIONAL PARK, CHILE

Doug Tompkins bought a swathe of montane forest in Chile’s Los Lagos region in 1991. This was gradually expanded by buying land until the protected area covered a million acres. The main ecosystem, Valdivian temperate rainforest, contains ancient alerce trees and is a habitat for pumas and other cats, Chile’s only marsupial, plus two indigenous deer: the endangered huemul and tiny pudu. Tompkins had footpaths and wood cabins built to open up the region. In 2017, the land was gifted to the Chilean state and declared a national park.

MONTE LEÓN NATIONAL PARK, ARGENTINA

In 2000, Conservación Patagonica (an NGO directed by Kris Tompkins) acquired a remote patch of sandstone cliffs, islets and beaches in Santa Cruz province. Damage done by decades of intensive sheep farming was rolled back as the vegetation recovered, creating a habitat for Magellanic penguins, guanacos, three cormorant species, sea lions, pumas and southern right whales. On October 20 2004, Congress passed the law that made Monte León a national park – the first continental marine park in Argentina.

IBERÁ NATIONAL PARK, ARGENTINA

While treasured by Argentinians, the glistening Iberá wetlands have never enjoyed the same international renown as the Pantanal in Brazil. In 2001, Doug Tompkins acquired Rincón del Socorro, a lovely old ranch now used as the main visitor accommodation (rincondelsocorro.com.ar). Six years later, a rewilding programme was initiated to protect ecosystems and reintroduce giant anteaters, South American tapirs, pampas deer and red-andgreen macaws. Iberá is also known for its bird life, caimans and capybaras. Jaguars have also been reintroduced. In 2022, the first male was released into the park, bringing the total of introduced jaguars to eight. Rewilding Argentina is also looking to reintroduce giant otters.

PATAGONIA NATIONAL PARK, CHILE

The Patagonian steppe has long been the poor relation of mountains, glaciers and lakes. But in 2004, Tompkins acquired a former cattle ranch in the isolated Chacabuco Valley, tore down the fences and invited guanacos and flightless rheas to graze on the golden grasslands. For accommodation, there are three campsites as well as a rather grand lodge. The land, along with four other Chilean territories, was made a national park in 2018. More information: rutadelosparques.org/en/ parque-nacional-patagonia

Read more about the Tompkins’s projects at tompkinsconservation.org