Private Land Gift Drives Vast Expansion Of Chile's National Parks

WASHINGTON — Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and American conservationist Kristine Tompkins on Wednesday pledged to grow Chile’s national park lands by roughly 11 million acres ― an area more than four times the size of Yellowstone National Park.  The announcement comes after lengthy negotiations and is the culmination of decades of work by Tompkins, who is the former CEO of outdoor retailer Patagonia, and her late husband and North Face co-founder, Douglas Tompkins.  “There’s never, to our knowledge, been a larger expansion of a national park system that was prompted by a private land donation,” Tom Butler, vice president of conservation advocacy at Tompkins Conservation, told The Huffington Post.  As part of the joint pledge signed Wednesday during a ceremony at Chile’s Pumalín Park, Tompkins Conservation will donate just over 1 million acres to the country’s government. The nonprofit group believes this is the largest private land donation to a state in history. Chile has agreed to contribute and reclassify roughly 10 million acres of government-held lands for conservation.  “It’s big leverage. It’s huge,” Butler said. “In the past, when we have made donations, we’ve been able to leverage that up. But not to this ratio. It’s a large impact.”  The end result will be the creation of five new national parks, including T...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news