US Mogul Creates South American Sanctuaries

Chile: March 26, 2004

SANTIAGO, Chile - Years of obstacles and bad press have not discouraged millionaire American conservationist Douglas Tompkins, who bought up land in Chile to make Latin America's biggest nature sanctuary and now is working toward creating a network of wildlife-protection areas in Argentina and Paraguay.

Tompkins, 61, who made his fortune in the fashion industry, has bought land in northern Argentina and is looking at possible purchases in Paraguay as well, to copy the concept of his Pumalin Park in Patagonia in southern Chile. In addition his wife, Kristine Tompkins, former CEO of Patagonia clothing, has more than 250,000 acres in three protected areas in southern Argentina through her Conservacion Patagonica charitable foundation, one of which is slated to be donated to Argentina's national parks system.

Tompkins, dubbed the ecological magnate in Chile, did not deny or confirm local news reports that his wife is now seeking to buy land in Chile's virgin and almost inaccessible area of Aisen, across the border from her Argentine holdings.

"You'd have to talk to her," he told Reuters in an interview. Kristine Tompkins did not answer an e-mail asking about her reported interest in buying land in Chile.

"We are 100 percent dedicated to our projects in Argentina," Tompkins said. "And probably also in Paraguay, where there are conservation opportunities. Not in Brazil, that country is a time bomb, there's going to be a bigger default than in Argentina."

AGREEMENT WITH GOVERNMENT

Tompkins is not the only wealthy person who has bought up huge expanses of forest in southern Chile. Local tycoons Anacleto Angelini and Eliodoro Matte bought forests for logging.

But Tompkins has turned his land into Pumalin Park, setting up ranger facilities, camping areas and trails that attract thousands of tourists and launching small farming projects that provide some jobs to local communities.

He financed his park when he sold out 13 years ago his interest in the Esprit fashion company that he had co-founded in San Francisco. The company has since become the Hong Kong-based Esprit Holdings Ltd. .

His Conservation Land Trust bought up 741,200 acres of dense forests of ancient larches, snowcapped volcanoes and fjords in the remote and uninhabited region of Palena.

The purchases sparked suspicions among local politicians who saw the huge land purchase as a threat to national sovereignty, since his holdings cross Chile from the Andes to the Pacific ocean, on both sides of the only state highway in the zone.

Years of negotiating with the government have built trust and improved his relationship with wary Chileans, but his reputation in Chile as an interloper still bothers Tompkins. He says if he were a foreign businessman who had bought up the land to cut down the trees, no one would have said a thing.

"I think there's a business plot to block conservation projects," he said. "That's why an environmental conservation movement has come into being to confront the business threat not only in Chile, but around the world," he said.

After six years of negotiations, Tompkins signed in December an agreement with the Chilean government converting Pumalin Park into a nature sanctuary twice as big as the metropolitan area of the capital, Santiago.

Lagos' close adviser Francisco Huenchumilla reached the agreement with Tompkins, fending off opposition lawmakers who were against the sanctuary plan, saying it threatened national sovereignty as well as business development in the region.

The U.S.-based Conservation Land Trust will hand over control of the sanctuary to Chile-based Fundacion Pumalin, which will be administered by a seven-member board, four named by Tompkins and three by regional academic, civilian and religious leaders.

Business activities will be prohibited in the reserve, but the government can use the land for infrastructure projects.

"The law is very clear. If the government decides to put a pipeline, power lines, roads or a port, there is an expropriation procedure, and they have to compensate," said Tompkins.

GREEN ENCLAVES

If Kristine Tompkins buys the 173,000 acres she is supposedly negotiating in Aisen, the couple will have invested more than $50 million in becoming Chile's biggest landholders, after the Angelini group, which controls Forestal Arauco forestry firm, and has 1.4 million acres.

But the total will shrink when Tompkins moves ahead with a promise to donate 208,000 acres of his land holdings to the government to expand an existing national park.

Chile's National System of Protected Wildlife areas includes national parks, reserves and monuments and covers more than 19 percent of the country's territory.

Seeking new areas to save, a few years ago Tompkins bought 692,000 acres in the Argentine province Corrientes where he has formed a wetlands park, Esteros del Ibera, which combines conservation zones with forestry and cattle ranching areas.

In Buenos Aires province he owns a large ranch dedicated to agriculture and beekeeping, and in the northern province of Salta he is "looking at" a piece of jungle land that would also go to conservation.

He did not say where the land is that he is looking at in Paraguay, but said it is also jungle terrain he would like to preserve.

Story by Ignacio Badal

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

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