Creating a natural park: a life-size dream
All of these protected areas were created or expanded through the persistence of the Tompkins, in partnership with the Chilean government, and benefited from land donated by the couple. They stretch the length of the southern half of Chile, from the Valdivian temperate rainforest of Hornopirén Park to the rocky islands and glaciers of Kawésqar Park.
To grasp the magnitude of what the Tompkins have accomplished and the obstacles they have overcome, however, it is best to start with Pumalín. Kris unfolds the cards and tells.
In 1991, Doug Tompkins bought a crumbling ranch in the Lake District, Chile – a country where he had climbed and skied as a youth in the early 1960s. he had founded the outdoor equipment company The North Face with his first wife, which he sold for a modest price before creating Esprit, another successful clothing brand.
In the early 1990s, quite well off financially, but divorced and disenchanted with rampant consumerism, Tompkins sold his assets and left the business world. He devoted himself to the very physical sports (mountaineering, skiing, kayaking) which had previously taken him to the South, as well as to the preservation of nature.
His plan to restore the ranch's native vegetation turned into a far more ambitious project. He established and funded a private foundation, the Conservation Land Trust, and through it began to purchase land.
Its aim was to bring together two large, largely wild territories, Pumalín Nord and Pumalín Sud. Between the two was another plot, the Huinay, owned by the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, which wanted to sell. But powerful political interests, including those of incumbent President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, opposed the deal.
That's when Kris McDivitt came on the scene. She had just left her position as general manager of another clothing brand, Patagonia. Besides the money she brought, she shared the beliefs of Doug Tompkins. They married in 1994.
Kris Tompkins is a small, strong woman with clinical intelligence. She evokes her memories without any sentimentality. The Huinay, yes, it is the ground that would have unified Pumalín, she told me. Its area of about 340 km 2 was not huge compared to the Pumalín North or South. But it encompassed one of the narrowest areas of mainland Chile, between the Gulf of Ancud and the Andean peaks.
