With 10 Million Acres in Patagonia, a National Park System Is Born
Months before, Tompkins Conservation, an umbrella group of conservation initiatives the couple directed, proposed a deal to the Chilean government: It would donate more than one million acres of their preserved
and restored territory to Chile if the government committed additional lands and designated new parks to create a Patagonian national park network.
It was a partnership, Ms. Tompkins said in an interview, "a real model to do large-scale conservation
and create national parks in a public-private way." The resulting 10 million-acre Patagonia National Park system is more than three times the size of the Yosemite and Yellowstone parks combined.
In the valley below, not far from the town of Cochrane, President Michelle Bachelet announced the creation of a vast national park system in Chile stretching
from Hornopirén, 715 miles south of the capital, Santiago, to Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America, where Chile splinters into fjords and canals.
The Bachelet administration ended up contributing nine million acres, more than the couple
had proposed, creating five new national parks and expanding an additional three.
Tompkins said that There is something about the expanse of Patagonia, a kind of haunting soulfulness to it that affects you physically,
or the planet," Ms. Bachelet said in an interview. that good not only for Chile, but f
The park is the brainchild of Kristine McDivitt Tompkins
and her husband, Douglas Tompkins, who founded The North Face and Esprit clothing companies, and starting in 1991, put $345 million — much of his fortune — buying large swaths of Patagonia.