Park for a wilder Europe
Creating Yellowstone’s rival
One of the founders of the American clothing brands The North Face and Patagonia has had his dream of creating protected state wildernesses out of privately bought land in Chile come to fruition.
Doug Tompkins died in 2015, but in January his wife Kristine Tompkins handed over 400,000ha of land to the Chilean government which have become Patagonia and Pumalín National Parks.
As part of the deal, Chile has expanded three existing national parks with 3.6m ha of federal land.
Tompkins, when he was president of Tompkins Conservation, said the deal was “a major milestone of our first 25 years of work”.