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Kristine Tompkins Left the Helm of Patagonia in 1993, Changed Her Life in South America, and Made the Conservation of Large Natural Areas a Lifelong Project That Continued Even After Her Husband’s Death
For years, Kristine Tompkins was associated with the growth of one of the world’s most well-known outdoor apparel brands.
But in 1993, her journey took a different turn.
Kristine stepped down as CEO of Patagonia and focused her life on nature conservation alongside Douglas Tompkins, an entrepreneur who had helped establish The North Face and Esprit.
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The change did not merely mean swapping an office for a rural property.
The couple developed an ambitious strategy: to acquire large private tracts of land, assemble neighboring properties, restore ecosystems, and work towards having these areas designated as national parks.
Decades later, the Rewilding Chile Foundation states that Kristine, Douglas, and partner organizations have helped protect approximately 15 million acres of parkland in Chile and Argentina, equivalent to about 6 million hectares.
Kristine Left Patagonia and Changed Her Life in 1993
Kristine Tompkins’ connection to Patagonia began well before her move to South America.
She worked with Yvon and Malinda Chouinard and eventually took charge of the company, remaining until 1993.
That year, she left her corporate career and headed to southern Chile, where Douglas Tompkins had already begun dedicating his life and resources to conservation projects.
The two married and began collaborating on a strategy that would make the Chilean Patagonia and regions of Argentina their primary areas of focus.
Kristine herself explained to National Geographic that the couple observed the expansion of industrial activities and the degradation of natural landscapes during their travels.
The idea that gained momentum was to buy large private properties, consolidate them, and eventually return them to the countries in the form of national parks.
Large Properties Began to Form Continuous Conservation Areas
The model developed by the Tompkins relied on scale.
Rather than protecting only small, isolated properties, the goal was to acquire sufficiently large tracts of land— including contiguous areas— to restore entire landscapes and create large territories dedicated to conservation.
One of the most well-known examples took place in Pumalín, Chile.
Douglas began acquiring land in the region in the early 1990s. In the following years, through a nonprofit foundation, the project gathered approximately 280,000 hectares of contiguous properties to form the Pumalín area.
The proposal went beyond simply purchasing the land.
The areas needed to be protected, restored, and prepared for a purpose that transcended private ownership: to become a nationally protected natural heritage.
Private lands were transferred to form national parks
This is one aspect that differentiates the project led by Kristine and Douglas Tompkins.
The properties were not simply bought to remain under private control indefinitely.
The strategy involved working with governments to incorporate these lands into public protected area systems.
A concrete case occurred in Yendegaia, in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego.
Kristine and Douglas became acquainted with the former cattle ranch in 1998 and participated in its acquisition that same year through a nonprofit organization and with the support of other philanthropists.
Years later, approximately 94,000 acres — about 38,000 hectares — were donated to contribute to the establishment of Yendegaia National Park, which was created in 2013, with the transfer of private lands completed later.
The initiative would be repeated, in different formats and scales, in other territories.
Douglas’s death did not halt the project
The couple’s journey took an abrupt turn in December 2015.
Douglas Tompkins died following a kayaking accident in Chilean Patagonia, leaving Kristine with the task of continuing the work developed together over decades.
However, the project did not end.
Kristine remained at the helm of Tompkins Conservation and continued negotiating and developing initiatives related to park creation, ecosystem restoration, and wildlife recovery.
Today, she is the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation and chairs the board of the Rewilding Chile Foundation.
The continuity of work following Douglas’s death has made Kristine one of the key figures in solidifying the legacy initiated by the couple.
In 2017, the Chilean government made progress on the so-called Route of the Parks of Patagonia, an initiative associated with the donation of land from Tompkins Conservation.
The agreement set in motion procedures for creating new parks and expanding existing protected areas.
According to the organization itself, the process represented the largest private land donation in the history of Chile for conservation purposes.
The outcome depended not only on the properties acquired by the Tompkins.
The strategy combined donated private lands with state-owned areas, allowing for the formation of much larger conservation units.
Thus, properties that were previously privately owned became part of a public system aimed at the permanent protection of nature.
The focus shifted from land protection to animal recovery
As the projects advanced, the efforts began to emphasize the concept of rewilding, which relates to the recovery of ecosystems and populations of animals that have disappeared or suffered significant declines in certain regions.
Conservation, therefore, has come to mean more than just preventing the destruction of vegetation.
It also involves efforts to reintroduce species to the environments from which they had disappeared.
Among the animals involved in programs linked to the organizations are jaguars, scarlet macaws, giant river otters, Darwin’s rhea, and huemul, a threatened deer species found in the Andean-Patagonian region.
This approach aims to recover not only the landscape but also the ecological relationships necessary for these environments to function with greater autonomy.
Work contributed to the creation and expansion of parks in Chile and Argentina
Over three decades, the scale of the project has grown significantly.
National Geographic reports that Kristine dedicated her efforts to the recovery of wild areas in Chile and Argentina, while Rewilding Chile states that she and Douglas participated in an initiative that reached a continental scale.
According to the Rewilding Chile Foundation, over 14 million acres have been protected over just more than 25 years of collaboration with governments and other philanthropists.
In another accounting provided by the organization itself, considering the activities of Tompkins Conservation and its partners, the number reaches approximately 15 million acres of parkland, which is close to 6 million hectares.
National Geographic Documentary Films further informs that Kristine contributed to the creation or expansion of 15 national parks in Chile and Argentina, including two marine national parks.
In Chile, seven new parks were created and three expanded
Part of this legacy can be observed specifically in Chilean territory.
Tompkins Conservation states that since the launch of major conservation projects initiated by Douglas and Kristine in the 1990s, the Rewilding Chile Foundation has helped create seven new national parks and expand three others.
These areas have become part of the vision of the Route of the Parks of Patagonia, forming an extensive corridor of protected territories in the south of the country.
The model demonstrates how originally private properties can take on a different function when conservation, restoration, and public policies are articulated around the same territory.
Three decades later, a project that began as a life change gained continental scale
When Kristine Tompkins left Patagonia in 1993, the decision meant abandoning a successful career to start a completely different path.
More than three decades later, that choice is now associated with one of the largest private conservation initiatives transformed into public heritage in the Americas.
Land has been purchased, properties have been consolidated, degraded environments have undergone restoration processes, and vast areas have been incorporated or linked to the creation and expansion of national parks.
Even after Douglas’s death, Kristine continued to lead this work.
Today, the scale helps to highlight the result: approximately 15 million acres of protected parkland in Chile and Argentina through the work of Tompkins Conservation and partner organizations, according to Rewilding Chile.
What began as a decision to step back from running a company has thus turned into a decades-long project aimed at reversing the privatization of the landscape: buying private land, restoring nature, and working to keep large portions of these territories protected as parks for future generations.
And you, do you believe that the model of buying private properties, restoring ecosystems, and subsequently transforming these areas into public parks could be applied on a larger scale in other countries, including Brazil?
