American 'Eco-Philanthropists' Buy And Preserve Land In Chile

Americans Kristine and Douglas Tompkins, both former fashion executives, have invested their fortune into the preservation of huge plots of land in Chile, and have faced an equal amount of admiration and oppostion from the locals and the entire nation. Their preservation efforts fall along the same lines as the early American National Parks movement, securing the most beautiful and at-risk land from human degradation. But this has eliminated many jobs and traditional ways of life.

"Using several foundations and investing more than $150 million, most of it their own, the couple have methodically bought more than 2 million acres of varied terrain in South America. They have accumulated parts of volcanoes, glaciers and 1,000-year-old stands of alerce trees, a towering larch species that Chile declared a national monument in 1976."

"For Tompkins, saving the land is all. He professes concern for the fate of those who work in the forests, pastures or seas, but insists that the salmoneros, gauchos, lumbermen, shepherds and others displaced by his environmentally correct scheme must find other employment, perhaps in ecotourism. That attitude has alienated many."