When Kris Tompkins, former Patagonia CEO, moved to Chile in the ’90s, she and her late husband, Doug Tompkins, began a decades-long conservation project in both Chile and Argentina. They faced obstacle after obstacle, but persevered, eventually creating more than a dozen national parks. It’s all the subject of a new documentary, Wild Life, streaming now, and of this week’s episode of Unpacked. Hear from Kris as she shares her story, from jaguar reintroduction to her enduring fascination with South America.
Read the transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/2a5hw3r
Discover more episodes of the podcast here: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
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Read the transcript here: https://rebrand.ly/2a5hw3r
Discover more episodes of the podcast here: https://www.afar.com/podcasts/unpacked
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CONNECT WITH AFAR
Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com
Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters
Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia
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TravelTranscript
00:00 I'm Aislinn Green, and this is Unpacked, the podcast that tackles one tricky topic
00:08 in travel every week. And this week, we're going to unpack what is essentially a love
00:13 story. There are three main characters in the story. We have Chris Tompkins, CEO of
00:18 the Tompkins Conservation, who we'll be hearing from today. We have her late husband,
00:23 Doug Tompkins. And then we have Chile, the country they both called home for decades.
00:29 And the place in which they dedicated their lives to creating a series of national parks.
00:34 Now, if their names sound familiar, here's why. Doug founded the North Face Outdoor Apparel
00:40 Company, and Chris was CEO of the Patagonia Outdoor Apparel Company for 20 years. In 1993,
00:47 they met and fell in love, and Chris moved to Chile to be with Doug, where they spent
00:51 the next decades of their lives buying land throughout Chile and Argentina, with the ultimate
00:56 goal of preserving it as national park land. They faced adversity and skepticism almost
01:02 every step of the way. And then, in 2015, tragedy hit. Doug died in a kayaking accident,
01:10 and Chris was left to forge ahead alone. Despite her grief, or maybe because of it, she persevered.
01:17 And in 2019, she followed through on the promise she and Doug had made all those years ago.
01:22 She turned over 1 million acres of land to the Chilean government, creating five new
01:27 national parks and expanding three more. This was the largest ever donation of private land
01:33 to the public. And it's all the subject of a new documentary called Wildlife that's streaming
01:39 beginning today, May 25th, on the National Geographic Channel and starting tomorrow on
01:43 Disney+. The film is gorgeous, it's heartbreaking, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I
01:49 spoke with Chris about the challenges she and Doug faced, their emphasis on working
01:54 with local communities, and the incredible work she and her organizations have accomplished
01:58 since 2019. Let's hear what she had to say.
02:03 Hi, thanks so much for being here today, Chris. I really appreciate it.
02:10 Oh, I'm happy to be with you.
02:12 Well, starting with Wildlife, how did the film come about?
02:17 The film came about because Jimmy Chin, one of the two team members, started coming down
02:23 not long after Doug died. And there was a lot going on, a lot of governmental work,
02:28 a lot of field work, and he just decided to start filming with no specific idea about
02:37 how he would use it or if he would ever use it. And then as we started to gear up toward
02:45 the big donation that took place in Chile and the donations that were simultaneously
02:50 taking shape in Argentina, they talked to me about actually making a film out of it
02:59 and becoming more directed. And at first I was hesitant. We're not really public people
03:06 in that sense. And then, first of all, I would never have done it if it hadn't been Chai
03:13 and Jimmy, because I trust them implicitly. And I thought this is a good way to talk about
03:21 conservation, talk about rewilding, bringing species back and so on. So that's why I decided
03:27 to do it.
03:28 Wow. It feels like a very honest tracking of all of these years. How did you feel about
03:35 how much of your own life is kind of included in the film?
03:40 Well, I think it's what's most important to me. And if Doug were here, he would say the
03:44 same thing, is that we've had lots of partnerships. We have had hundreds of team members who really
03:53 made all these things possible. So when I go out and talk about our work or even my
04:01 own experiences in conservation, I'm always talking about our projects and we. I never
04:10 think of it as me personally or Doug personally, because these kinds of projects require unbelievable
04:21 teamwork and partnerships that we would never have been able to do what we've done in the
04:28 absence of those two key areas and all the communities, the national governments. So
04:35 it truly is a film about hundreds of people rather than simply Doug and Chris.
04:41 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And it comes through. Well, speaking about your personal
04:47 experience just a little bit longer, the film opens with this choice that you made after
04:52 Doug's death to quote, go to work and don't stop. And I was curious how these projects
04:57 were kind of a guiding light for you. Like what helped you make that choice?
05:02 Honestly, I'm not sure I ever actually had a choice for my personality, for my sense
05:11 of responsibility for all the team members and governments we were working with, local,
05:19 regional, national communities. So I've thought a lot about it since I saw the film fairly
05:26 recently. And it wasn't a singular choice to keep going. It may never have been a choice.
05:36 It was always something I was going to have to do because I would be letting down hundreds
05:41 of people had I not.
05:43 Yeah, that makes sense. Well, you have also spoken about how much Patagonia meant to you
05:50 and it seemed to kind of grab you from the beginning. So I was just curious if you could
05:53 describe what that first meeting was like for you and how you feel about it all these
06:00 years later.
06:02 The first time I visited Patagonia, the region, was over on the Argentine side, down way in
06:10 the south, close to Chaltén. And even though I grew up in the Western states of the United
06:17 States, the scale of the landscape was just phenomenal to me. And I was on a bus with
06:26 the people whom we were traveling with and I asked the bus driver to stop and let me
06:30 out and I walked the last, wasn't very far, half a mile, mile into town by myself out
06:35 there because it was an epiphany in a way for me to be in these landscapes and the grasslands.
06:45 Even though they were beat up, I would come to understand this later. For me, it was as
06:51 powerful as when I was in Tibet. It has that kind of vastness to it that is so compelling.
07:00 I visited about five or six years ago and it's still one of the most phenomenal places
07:05 I've ever been. Absolutely hands down. How much time do you spend there now?
07:11 Well, because of COVID, I only came out to the States, back to the family ranch at the
07:19 onset of COVID. Actually, Jimmy was down there filming and so on and we all split up and
07:27 everybody else went to the United States and I stayed in Chile just like I always would.
07:33 And then as things became more black and white about the virus, then I decided to leave.
07:40 I don't think I'll live down there full time anymore, but I'll spend half the year between
07:48 the two countries.
07:49 That sounds like a pretty dreamy life.
07:52 I'm very fortunate. Very.
07:56 Well you hinted at this with what you said about rewilding, but I was curious if you
08:00 could kind of walk us through what you've been doing since that big donation in 2019
08:06 and since the creation of those initial five parks and the expansion of three. How has
08:10 your work grown since then?
08:12 Well, I would like to add that during the big donation of the five new national parks
08:17 and then enlarging the other three, we were also in Argentina, actually a little before
08:23 that donating our Ibarra National Park. And so there was a lot going on, but even before
08:31 we made those donations in both countries, we were working on new projects. We just weren't
08:37 talking about them. In Chile, we have a very large project going on down in the Straits
08:45 of Magellan. It's marine and terrestrial and rewilding Chile. And in rewilding Argentina,
08:53 we're working together on a project called Patagonia Azul, which is, I just came from
08:58 there a couple of weeks ago and it's phenomenal. It has a terrestrial component, which is not
09:05 small, but it's really focused on marine protection. So yeah, there are a lot of big projects going
09:14 on and I would say the commonality between both countries is that it really going for
09:23 conservation of land and sea simultaneously. And in the first decades, we focused more
09:31 on land conservation and rewilding of extirpated species and helping set up the Ruta de los
09:40 Parques in Chile, all those kinds of ancillary things, which are key to conservation. But
09:46 now we're really, we are equally focused on land and sea.
09:51 Well, and just stepping back a moment for our listeners who may not be familiar with
09:55 the concept of rewilding, would you explain what that is and what it means?
10:00 Yeah, I'd be happy to because it's half of our work now, really important. Rewilding
10:07 is not a phrase we coined. It really comes out of the conservation biology movement.
10:15 And what it says, essentially, it's not enough to just preserve territory. Where there are
10:23 missing species, especially keystone species, critical species, you have to commit yourself
10:30 to bringing them back. And we have this phrase that we use probably too often, but it's so
10:38 clear. Landscape without wildlife is just scenery. And we've been working with species
10:47 in Chile since the very beginning whose numbers were low or fragile. So that, in fact, in
10:55 some cases, that's been a big motivator of why we would get involved in a particular
10:59 area or not. But in the last 15 years, we have committed ourselves to bringing back
11:07 species who've been gone for up to 70 to 100 years from an area. And that's highly
11:14 complex and you have to be really committed to get involved in all of this. But I would
11:23 never commit to a project in Tompkins Conservation, and nor would the two groups in the Southern
11:29 Cone, without committing yourself on the front end of, yes, protecting the sea and landscape,
11:37 but also how healthy is that landscape and trying to bring it back.
11:42 MS. BEH: Absolutely. And the red-winged macaw, was that one of the examples? Because that
11:48 was an interesting story, right? I think you had said it was 100 years since this.
11:52 DR. GUNDERSON Yeah. I mean, technically, they've been gone 130 years.
11:56 MS. BEH: Wow.
11:57 DR. GUNDERSON And it's by far the most complex project we've ever taken on in terms of rewilding.
12:05 MS. BEH How so?
12:07 DR. GUNDERSON Well, there are very few red-winged macaws. And so the first macaws that we were
12:15 able to work with were coming from zoos or private collections. So they don't know how
12:20 to fly. They don't know what to eat. We had to train, this is a long story. I could talk
12:26 to you for four days just on the river. You're teaching a species how to do what it was born
12:32 to do and never had the opportunity to do it. And that means flying, just basic flying.
12:41 How do you protect yourself against prey? What is prey? We have gotten into puppetry
12:47 and all sorts of things to train these birds. And today we have macaws flying free and chicks
12:56 were born in the wild. So, a film could be made about the return of the jaguar and working
13:07 with the way mule deer and the macaws. Their stories all their own.
13:10 MS. BEH That is pretty incredible. And such dedication. I would imagine there are many
13:15 setbacks along the way, along the road to reintroduction.
13:18 DR. GRIFFIN There are. We haven't had many, actually the first four macaws we set free,
13:29 a few of them died because they didn't know, they weren't prepared. And nobody really understood
13:37 what it would take to bring birds back into the wild in this way. So, everybody's on a
13:44 steep learning curve as ever. Always.
13:49 MS. BEH And why the emphasis on both land and sea? Why did you make that shift or expansion
13:55 I should say?
13:56 DR. GRIFFIN Well, you know, our good friends Sylvia Earle and Jane Goodall, who I just
14:02 saw the day before yesterday, they, people understand that though you can't see what's
14:09 under the surface of the water, the marine habitat is by rights this teeming, truly gloriously
14:21 complex ecosystem that is dying very, very quickly. And a lot of regulation has to be
14:29 done within the fishing industry. And also beginning to look at the sea as something
14:35 we also have great responsibility for, meaning the big we. To the point where today I don't
14:41 even distinguish between their importance. For me, in every big project, combining land
14:50 and sea conservation is probably the central pillar now of how I see conservation tied
14:58 to rewilding of species.
15:00 MS. BEH And rewilding will continue within the ocean and within the seas?
15:04 DR. GRIFFIN Well, I think so much of the ocean, of course, it's very complex, but just changing
15:10 a lot of the fishing regimens, it's like ranching and farming on the land. If you change your
15:17 management policies and means of doing things, then we can reboot the Patagonian step grasslands.
15:26 We can see that there are squid and octopus and so on in the seas. So, one's easy to see,
15:35 the other one is very difficult to see because it's under the water.
15:39 MS. BEH Yeah, yes, absolutely. We actually just did a story on Costa Rica's focus on
15:45 marine conservation and the politics of that. And, you know, it's very complex.
15:50 DR. GRIFFIN It's very complex. In some ways, creating protected areas on land is very complex.
15:58 It requires the same kind of governmental, private, public cooperation and partnership,
16:04 which it's always been central to our work, but ever more so on the marine side.
16:11 [Music]
16:24 Going back to that community aspect, you did face pretty significant opposition early
16:29 on in Chile.
16:30 MS. BEH That's right.
16:31 DR. GRIFFIN And I was curious to know what your efforts were like in terms of pulling
16:35 the community or working with the community and showing that you're invested in them.
16:41 And what is the view nowadays towards conservation?
16:44 MS. BEH Well, I think every place is different, of course, depending on how local communities
16:51 are using the lands and their territories. They're the ones who've been there all along.
16:56 In the case of Iberá wetlands up in northeastern Argentina, there are 10 communities around
17:03 this 2 million acre wetlands. And because of rewilding, it's essential that we work
17:10 very closely with not only the, like jaguars, let's take those for an example. If you're
17:18 trying to bring back a top carnivore, you can't just decide to do it. The nation, then
17:27 the province, and then the communities around, in this case Iberá, have to be not only willing,
17:36 but really participative. And today we have somewhere between 14 and 20 jaguars breeding
17:44 in the wild, giving life to cubs in the wild. Very specifically because of the work that
17:52 was really in partnership from the beginning with all of these communities and provinces
17:58 and national governments. They are there before you get there. Those are their territories.
18:06 And we learn so much. We call it consulting the geniuses of the place because they are.
18:15 Most of the creation of land parks are with local and regional team members from the beginning.
18:25 It's a partnership and it's really hand in hand year by year, helping to develop ways
18:33 to create more tourism in both countries. In Chile, we created what's called the Ruta
18:40 de los Parques, the route of parks, which is 2,500 miles long and now 18 national parks.
18:49 So we know that it's not enough just to create and donate a national park. You're never done,
18:58 but the local communities have to be part of the architects and the architecture of
19:04 any project because their ability to create economic flow into the local communities,
19:13 the durability of those parks depend on it.
19:16 What were some of the concerns of the communities specifically related to, say, Iberia and the
19:21 jaguars?
19:22 Well, it's very funny because we prepped for three or four years before we even mentioned
19:30 the word jaguar in terms of nobody had ever had established a breeding center for jaguars
19:37 before and then releasing the offspring of those original individuals. So there was a
19:44 lot of suspicion anyway because it was the first one of its kind in the world. But we
19:51 were prepared to go out into all the communities of Corrientes with education, with hundreds,
20:00 thousands of hours of talking about it and so on. And by chance, and I mean that, this
20:07 had nothing to do with us, Corrientinos, their spirit animal has been the jaguars for hundreds
20:16 of years.
20:17 Oh, interesting.
20:18 And so finally, what we thought was going to happen was the reverse. They were pushing
20:24 us to go faster to see jaguars walking out and into the wild.
20:32 Oh, that's great.
20:35 And the red-winged macaws is another great example of that also in Iberia. When we got
20:43 to a place where we thought we could really release a substantial number of them with
20:50 pretty high certainty of their survival, the teams from Rewilding Argentina started going
20:58 out on local and regional radio and everything else to talk to people in their homes that
21:06 if you see one flying, call this number because we're trying to track them. And you can't
21:14 believe the response.
21:16 Really?
21:17 People started from, you know, they note the time. It was 1102. In my backyard, there was
21:28 one and the characteristics around the beak, they belong to the communities and those birds
21:36 are flying on the community territory, which is today a provincial and national park. And
21:43 if somebody monkeys with a red-winged macaw, there are hundreds and hundreds of people
21:50 whom you'll have to answer to.
21:52 Oh, I love that.
21:54 And the giant anteater, the same thing. Wherever we're working, we need to stand back. Eventually,
22:03 it'll be the communities around Patagonia National Park in Chile, the Chaitin, the community
22:10 that's right outside of Pumalin Douglas Tompkins National Park. Those are the people who have
22:18 developed this rightful sense of ownership and responsibility for these parks and the
22:27 wild animals in them. I mean, it's joyous. This has really changed my life.
22:34 That is incredible. And I guess that's what you want, right? Like they will ultimately
22:38 be the protectors of this place and to have that kind of total buy-in is really, really
22:45 wonderful.
22:46 I always think they were there long before we arrived and they'll be there long after
22:50 we go. And our going in Chile and Argentina is when we donate all of the land back to
22:58 the state, then we do everything we can to support that effort.
23:03 Yeah. I was curious how rewilding Argentina and rewilding Chile came about and the ways
23:10 that they're connected to the Tompkins conservation.
23:13 So of course I came from a business background and I retired sort of at the top of my game
23:19 running Patagonia. So I really understood the importance of having a succession plan.
23:26 And when Doug died, so suddenly within a month and a half, I was sitting in our living room
23:33 in Socorro on the edge of Ibarra wetlands. And I told Sophia, who'd been running Argentina
23:41 all along with us, you have to become independent. You have to give you five years. Let's make
23:49 a plan because if something happens to me, then I want our legacy not to be the first
23:59 30 years, though I'm extremely proud of it, but our legacy needs to be what's happening
24:04 from today forward. And if I die, I want them to have the financial cushion that we provided
24:14 for five more years, that my contacts, my everything, I help fundraise and I still work
24:22 with them on strategies and stuff. But I very specifically insisted that Tompkins Conservation
24:30 and Argentina become Rewilding Argentina, where they picked their own name, which they
24:35 did, and that they both, both countries become independent because what's important to me
24:43 is actually the third generation of leaders and fourth generation. My time, I'm 72, I
24:52 don't know how much longer I'll live, but we haven't done our job. If the people we
25:00 have utmost faith in and have worked together in some cases, almost 30 years, they need
25:09 to be able to stand as independents and just keep going regardless of what happens to me.
25:15 That's why we did it.
25:16 Very wise. So you're not very involved in the day to day operations of either?
25:22 No. I'm the chairman of the board of Rewilding Chile in Chile, and I'm an advisory counselor,
25:31 the grandmother really in Argentina. I love strategic stuff, not like on a piece of paper,
25:38 but mapping and whatever the real arguments, should we be in, should we be out? I love
25:45 all that stuff. But I'm so deeply proud of them. And then we have the Tompkins Conservation
25:51 Team here in the United States. So all three of them are, I'm very proud of them. All three
25:57 teams are running really well, and I'm very grateful.
26:01 That's cool. Well, why do you think tourism is so key to these parks?
26:07 Well, I, of course, we grew up in the US National Park system in the sense that we visited an
26:14 awful lot of them. And we always wanted people to come visit the parks that we donated. We
26:22 very specifically didn't want them to be privately held by us. Because 85% of the reason to do
26:30 it was to flip them back to be owned by all citizens of the country so people can come.
26:39 People are welcome. And I firmly believe, and I think all of us do, that you can't fall
26:49 in love and protect something you don't know. And I always give this example, if I buy a
26:56 Picasso and it's sitting in my living room, my friends and family will see it. But if
27:04 I donate that Picasso to MoMA or wherever, millions of people will see it every year
27:13 and that it will help inform their thinking about beauty, about art, whatever it is. And
27:18 so for us, it was essential that these are accessible to all people, and that they'll
27:26 go hiking and be miserable and rainy and cold. And those are the days we remember, don't
27:31 you think?
27:32 Absolutely, yes.
27:34 And you fall in love with those experiences. And that, if we could give anything as a gift
27:42 per se, that would be it. That we've had so many programs getting young kids into the
27:50 park, going backpacking, binoculars around their necks, all of these things. Because
27:57 that's how the young, the new generations almost come back to the understanding that
28:04 we are part of a very big hole, not at the center of it.
28:10 What type of, just a few examples of the types of experiences that people could have?
28:16 Oh yeah. If you're in Iberá, you can go out with some of the local landowners. They're
28:25 the only ones who really know how to get around the wetlands in the interior. You can go on
28:30 horseback, you can go in canoes, the horses pull canoes. And these are dugout canoes,
28:36 these aren't Coleman canoes. You can go to their homes and eat a real quarantino meal,
28:47 cooked over the fire, absolutely genuine. You can go stay in really any of the 10 communities,
28:54 they have all sorts of different levels of accommodations. Over in the Chaco, you can
29:02 go take a kayak and go down the Bermejo River. You see tapirs, you see all sorts of wildlife
29:10 and getting into the Chaco, which is one of the most important ecosystems that is not
29:16 being protected today. And in Chile, you can go horseback, you can go hiking, camping,
29:24 go to estancias, have an asado, go out riding with some of the gauchos. Down along the coast,
29:32 there's hiking, if you're brave enough, you can swim. It's penguin rookeries, different
29:43 kinds of whales, dolphins, sea lions. Each territory has its own cultural climate and
29:53 things to do, but it's very active. There are lots of things to do.
29:58 - Well, going back to the film, what do you hope it sparks for viewers?
30:03 - Gosh, my hope for wildlife, the film is A, that people are inspired to do something,
30:14 maybe not change your life the way we did, such a 180 degrees, but that at any age, you
30:22 can change your life and not to be afraid of that. And it doesn't require lots of money
30:27 and so on. I know that makes it easier. So I think in terms of how one sees their life,
30:34 I hope they see messages of that, or I hope people realize that we just cannot abdicate
30:43 our future because we're not sure what we should be doing. Everybody, regardless of
30:49 where they come from, how much money they have, how much education they've had, whatever
30:55 it is, if you want to go out and work towards your future, every town, certainly every city,
31:03 every state, every province, every country has a labyrinth of ways to participate. You
31:10 could help count butterflies in your area. You can put money together and buy half an
31:16 acre. It doesn't matter to me what it is as much as it matters deeply to me that we feel
31:25 like stepping up and becoming part of billions of people who are really trying to imagine
31:33 a world that is healthy, dignified, sane. And I mean that sincerely. I know it sounds
31:41 like just a statement you toss off, but it isn't. And that's what I hope people come
31:48 away with, the importance of community, the importance of the community between humans
31:57 and the non-human world. That's a language we all need to learn to speak.
32:04 Hear, hear. More broadly speaking, what do you hope for Patagonia and kind of the Southern
32:10 Cone in general?
32:12 Well, I see lots of good points of light in the Patagonia region and the Southern Cone,
32:17 whether it's in Argentina or Chile. There are a lot of ranchers who are changing their
32:25 method of ranching, grazing. A lot of ranchers are using great Pyrenees or other breeds of
32:32 dog to protect their flocks from predators instead of just poisoning them and killing
32:40 them. I think Patagonia, the region has enjoyed tourism for a long time, but I think it's
32:48 very exciting that some of these other areas, for instance, down in the South of Chile,
32:55 that is like a gold mine. It's little known and so extraordinary. And there are places
33:03 to camp, there are small hostarias or beautiful explorer lodges. So it's really, it's quite
33:13 open in that sense. And I hope whoever visits Patagonia or wherever it is, that people do
33:21 fall in love and they have a sense of leaving something positive behind, whether it's money
33:27 or, it doesn't matter to me. It's that we have responsibility for those places we love
33:35 and participate in their well-being. That's what matters to me.
33:39 Well, thank you, Chris, so much for your time and for all the work that you've done and
33:43 continue to do. It's really quite extraordinary.
33:46 Well, thank you for having us.
33:48 Thank you, Chris, for your time, your work, and your inspiration. And that's it for this
33:57 week. In the show notes, we'll share a link to the documentary, which you can again watch
34:02 on the National Geographic channel and on Disney Plus, and we'll link out to her organization,
34:07 TompkinsConservation.org. We'll also link to the two now independent organizations that
34:13 manage conservation within the parks, Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile. And at AFAR,
34:20 we've covered all the Chilean and Argentinian parks extensively, so we'll link to resources
34:24 for travelers as well. And finally, you can follow Chris on Instagram @Christine_Tompkins.
34:35 Ready for more unpacking? Visit AFAR.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
34:41 @AFARmedia. If you enjoyed today's exploration, I hope you'll come back for more great stories.
34:47 Subscribing makes this easy. You can find Unpacked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your
34:52 favorite podcast platform. And be sure to rate and review the show. It helps other travelers
34:57 find it. This season, we also want to hear from you. Is there a travel dilemma, trend,
35:03 or topic you'd like us to explore? Email us at unpacked@afar.com.
35:09 This has been Unpacked, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislinn
35:13 Green and Nikki Galteland. Music composition by Chris Gawlin. And remember, the world is
35:19 complicated. We're here to help you unpack it.
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