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Kris Tompkins | |
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Born | Kristine McDivitt June 1950 (age 74) Santa Paula, California, U.S. |
Occupation(s) | Conservationist, businesswoman |
Organization(s) | Patagonia, Tompkins Conservation |
Spouse | |
Website | tompkinsconservation |
Kristine Tompkins (born June 1950) is an American conservationist. Tompkins is the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc.. [1]
Born in southern California, Kristine McDivitt spent most of her childhood on her great-grandfather’s ranch. She spent some early years in Venezuela, where her father worked for an oil company. [2] She attended college at the College of Idaho in Caldwell, [3] where she ski-raced competitively.
Beginning in 1973, she returned to California and worked for Yvon Chouinard, and helped him turn his fledgling piton business into Patagonia, Inc. [4] She became the company’s first CEO.
In 1993, she retired from Patagonia, Inc, married Doug Tompkins (founder of The North Face and co-founder of Esprit). The Tompkins decided to focus their efforts on national parks, and started a suite of nonprofits, including, Conservation Land Trust and Conservacion Patagonica, all of which have now consolidated under Tompkins Conservation.[ citation needed ] In 1991, Doug Tompkins began acquiring private land for conservation purposes in Chile’s Los Lagos Region, managing it as a public-access park in the threatened Valdivian temperate rainforest. Pumalín Park received official nature sanctuary status in 2005 and was designated a national park in 2018, prompted by Tompkins Conservation’s donation of almost 725,000 acres for the new, roughly 1-million-acre park, Pumalin Douglas Tompkins National Park, named in honor of its founder. [5] [6] [7]
The Tompkins' conservation efforts expanded to Argentina, starting with the Iberá Wetlands of the Corrientes province. In the wetland ecosystem, they have launched projects to reintroduce extirpated species, such as the giant anteater, jaguar, red-and-green macaw, and giant river otter. [8] [9] The rewilding work in Ibera, as well as many other projects in the country, is now carried out by Rewilding Argentina, the team assembled by Kris and Doug, led by Sofia Heinonen.
After years of collaborating with governments, local organizations, scientists, philanthropists, and communities, in January 2018 Kris, on behalf of Tompkins Conservation, and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed decrees to create five new national parks in Chile and expand three others, adding a total of more than 10 million acres of new national parklands to Chile. For scale, that is more than three times the size of Yosemite and Yellowstone combined, or approximately the size of Switzerland. With one million acres of land from Tompkins Conservation and an additional 9 million acres of federal land from Chile, this has been billed as the largest donation of land from a private entity to a country in history. [10] [11]
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild. However, reintroduction of a species can also be for pest control; for example, wolves being reintroduced to a wild area to curb an overpopulation of deer. Because reintroduction may involve returning native species to localities where they had been extirpated, some prefer the term "reestablishment".
Douglas Rainsford Tompkins was an American businessman, conservationist, outdoorsman, philanthropist, filmmaker, and agriculturalist. He founded the North Face Inc, co-founded Esprit and various environmental groups, including the Foundation for Deep Ecology and Tompkins Conservation.
Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park is a 400,000-hectare (1,000,000-acre) national park in the Palena Province of Chile, created by Tompkins Conservation, which was endowed and led by the American business magnate Doug Tompkins and his wife, former CEO of Patagonia, Inc., Kris Tompkins. Designated a Nature Sanctuary in 2005, Parque Pumalín was Chile's largest private nature reserve and operated as a public-access park, with an extensive infrastructure of trails, campgrounds, and visitor centers. By an accord announced on 18 March 2017, the park was gifted to the Chilean state and became a national park.
Palena Province is the southernmost administrative area in Chile's Los Lagos Region Los Lagos (X). The area is also called Continental Chiloe or Northern Patagonia, as geographers consider the Palena Province to be the starting point of Chilean Patagonia which extends south from Palena all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Palena Province is remote, beautiful, and difficult to access. In fact, Palena is one of the most sparsely populated provinces in the country and features a stunning geography characterized by steep fjords, wild rivers, hot springs, and numerous snow-capped volcanos. Chile's Austral Highway is not continuous through the jagged geography of Palena Province. Motorists accessing the area by car are required to take two ferries across fjords to cross the province.
The Iberá Wetlands are a mix of swamps, bogs, stagnant lakes, lagoons, natural slough, and courses of water in the center and center-north of the province of Corrientes, Argentina.
Cerro Castillo National Park is a nature reserve of Chile located in the Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region, south of Coyhaique. The park is named after Cerro Castillo, its highest mountain and main attraction. The Carretera Austral passes through the park.
Futaleufú is a Chilean town and commune located in Northern Patagonia. Located at the confluence of the Espolon and Futaleufú river valleys, the town is approximately 10 kilometers from the Argentine border. Futaleufú is the provincial capital of Palena Province, Los Lagos Region. Futaleufú, known locally as “Futa,” is a frontier town with a growing tourism industry based on adventure tourism—most specifically whitewater rafting—but also fishing, mountain biking, trekking, and canyoning. Due to its proximity to the Argentine border, Futaleufú is most easily accessed from airports in Esquel and Bariloche, Argentina. Other tourists access the town through the Northern Patagonia Airport in Chaiten, or vía a system of ferries that leave from the closest major Chilean city, Puerto Montt.
Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes. It differs from other forms of ecological restoration in that rewilding aspires to reduce human influence on ecosystems. It is also distinct from other forms of restoration in that, while it places emphasis on recovering geographically specific sets of ecological interactions and functions that would have maintained ecosystems prior to human influence, rewilding is open to novel or emerging ecosystems which encompass new species and new interactions.
Perito Moreno National Park is a national park in Argentina. It is located in the western region of Santa Cruz Province on the border with Chile. It has an area of 126,830 hectares of mountains and valleys at a height of 900 metres above sea level.
Monte León National Park is a federal protected area in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Established on 20 October 2004, it houses a representative sample of the steppe and Patagonian coast biodiversity in good state of conservation, as well as several paleontological sites of high value. It runs along 36 km (22 mi) of the southern Argentine Sea coastline.
Conservación Patagónica was a conservation group with a mission "to create national parks in Patagonia that save and restore wildlands and wildlife, inspire care for the natural world, and generate healthy economic opportunities for local communities." Founded in 2000 by Kristine Tompkins, former CEO of Patagonia, Inc, Conservación Patagónica first focused on the creation of Monte León National Park in Argentina, the country's first coastal national park. The group played the central role in securing the funds for the purchase of Estancia Monte Leon and in creating long-term management plans for the new national park. As of December 31, 2018 Conservación Patagónica has merged into Tompkins Conservation.
Horacio Matarasso is an ornithologist and leader of South American bird watchers.
Yendegaia National Park is in Tierra del Fuego in the Magallanes y la Antártica Chilena Region of Chile and contains 150,612 ha of mountainous terrain and Valdivian temperate rain forest. It borders the Alberto de Agostini National Park and Tierra del Fuego National Park.
The Iberá Provincial Reserve is a provincial protected area in the north-west of Corrientes Province, north-eastern Argentina. Established on 15 April 1983, it contains a mix of swamps, bogs, stagnant lakes, lagoons, natural sloughs and courses of water. With an area of about 1,300,000 ha, the reserve spans a significant 14% of the Corrientes province, and is the largest protected area in the country.
Patagonia National Park Is a National Park in Chile with a natural path where people formally walk on tracks
Iberá National Park is a national park in Argentina located in the northeast province of Corrientes. The national park adjoins the 5,530 km2 Iberá Provincial Park to the southeast. The national park and provincial park are both within the Iberá Provincial Nature Reserve, a conservation area of 13,245 km2 created in 1982. The combined protected area is the largest in Argentina.
Melimoyu National Park is a protected area of Chile in the comuna of Cisnes, in the Aysén Region. The land for the creation of the park was assembled from public lands and estates donated by Tompkins Conservation, an organization founded by American conservationists Kristine and Douglas Tompkins, as part of a collaborative project to create a "National Parks of Patagonia Network".
Sofía Heinonen is an Argentine conservationist and ecoutourism advocate.
Rewilding Argentina is an Argentine nonprofit conservation organization. It purchases private land, restoring ecosystems and developing wildlife corridors, then donates the land for national parks. The organization also reintroduces native species. Founded in 2010 by Argentine conservationists, Rewilding Argentina was preceded by Conservation Land Trust, which was established by Doug Tompkins in 1992.