Douglas Tompkins - Pumalin Park

Pumalin Park

Tompkins's first major conservation project was Pumalín Park in the Palena Province of Chile, an 800,000-acre (3,200 km2) area of Valdivian temperate rainforest, high peaks, lakes, and rivers. In 1991, he bought the Reñihué farm, a semi-abandoned farm at the end of the Reñihué Fjord, planning to set aside 42,000 acres (170 km2) of this unique forest from possible exploitation. In the next decade, The Conservation Land Trust added another 700,000 acres (2,800 km2) in nearly contiguous parcels to create Pumalín Park. In 2005, then-President Ricardo Lagos declared this area a Nature Sanctuary, a special designation of the Chilean State, granting it additional environmental and non developmental protection. The Conservation Land Trust (a U.S. environmental foundation) has donated these protected lands to Fundación Pumalín (a Chilean foundation), for their administration and continual development as a type of National Park with public access under a private initiative. Through creating public-access infrastructure, including trails, campgrounds, visitor centers, and a restaurant, Tompkins seeks to promote wilderness experience, in hopes of inspiring a deeper environmental ethic in the park's many thousands of visitors. Although the project initially provoked controversy—largely because this type of private conservation philanthropy was previously unheard of in Chile—the park continues to gain the support of locals and visitors alike.