Pumalín Park
Tompkins's first major conservation project was Pumalín Park in the Palena Province of Chile, an 800000 acre area of Valdivian temperate rain forest, 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 42000 acre of this unique forest from possible exploitation. In the next decade, The Conservation Land Trust added another 700000 acre in nearly contiguous parcels to create Pumalín Park, which eventually stretched from the Corcovado Gulf to the Andes mountains, over an area of 800,000 acres.
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) 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.[19] Through creating public-access infrastructure, including trails, campgrounds, visitor centers, and a restaurant, Tompkins sought to promote wilderness experience, in hopes of inspiring a deeper environmental ethic in the park's many thousands of visitors.[19]
In March 2018, the Chilean president Michelle Bachelet announced that the government was accepting the gift of 1 million acres from Tompkins Conservation and creating five new national parks and expanding three more, covering 11 million acres in all, the largest private land donation in history. At a ceremony for signing of the accord between government and the foundation, Tompkins' long-term friend Yvon Chouinard claimed that “No other human has ever created this many acres of protected wildlands".[5]
Corcovado National Park
Just to the south of Pumalin, Corcovado National Park represents one of Tompkins's completed conservation projects. In 1994, The Conservation Land Trust (CLT), along with U.S. philanthropist Peter Buckley, acquired 208000 acre of native forest that was slated for logging, adjacent to vast areas of federal land under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Armed Forces. CLT offered to donate this parcel back to the Chilean state, provided that the whole area became a national park. In 2005, then-president Ricardo Lagos accepted this proposal, and the 726000 acre Corcovado National Park was born.[20]
Iberá National Park
The Iberá project was a private conservation enterprise that was spearheaded by Tompkins, working with George Soros, Harvard University,[21] and Rewilding Argentina.[22] Its goal was to strengthen protection and restore habitat and biodiversity in the Iberá Wetlands in Corrientes Province, Argentina.
Iberá Provincial Reserve, established in 1983, encompasses 1,300,000 ha of wetlands, grasslands, forest, and rangelands, including both publicly-owned lands and private cattle ranches. The Iberá project advocated for enhanced protection of government-owned floodplain lands, and in 2009 the provincial government created Iberá Provincial Park on 553,000 hectares of public land in the reserve.[23]
Led by Tompkins, the Conservation Land Trust acquired 150,000 hectares of old cattle ranches bordering the provincial park, including habitats not then represented in the park. Most cattle and internal fences were removed, and a land management program was developed to restore native vegetation and habitat.[23]
Other conservation projects
Other conservation projects that Tompkins spearheaded include:
- The Melimoyu and Isla Magdalena conservation projects in coastal Chile, 200 km and 300 km respectively south of Pumalín Park
- The Yendegaia project in Chile's Tierra del Fuego
- Patagonia Park, formerly known as Estancia Valle Chacabuco, 30 minutes north of Cochrane, Chile[27] and 800 km south of Pumalín Park
