Patagonia without Tompkins?

Early last year, while driving Chile’s Carretera Austral, I photographed this bumper sticker – plastered onto the back side of a highway sign – denigrating environmental philanthropist Douglas Tompkins in hopes that he would get out of Patagonia, where he helped create new protected areas in Argentina as well. While small, strong opposition to Tompkins came from local and even national government officials, and even some paranoid nationalists who even imagined that he was a Zionist.

In a sense, Tompkins’s opponents got their wish – “Patagonia without Tompkins” – when the North Face founder died Tuesday after a kayaking accident on Lago General Carrera (pictured above), a short drive north of the Parque Patagonia created by his widow Kristine McDivitt Tompkins. Ironically, in a 2012 interview in which he defended his conservation activities in Chile and elsewhere, Tompkins made the comment that “This is where I am going to croak.”

I met Tompkins a few times, but never really got to sit down and talk with him, though I did have an extensive interview several years ago with Kris Tompkins about Parque Patagonia and their other properties. Given their legacy with Parque Pumalín and similar projects, there may never be the “Patagonia without Tompkins” that his detractors hoped for.

Meanwhile, in Related News

On Tuesday, before hearing of Tompkins’s death, I paid a brief visit to Argentina’s Parque Nacional Monte León, on the Atlantic Coast of Santa Cruz province. This was another Tompkins/McDivitt project, created by purchasing the Estancia Monte León sheep farm from its owner Silvia Braun (pictured below with her husband, Juan Kuriger).

Silvia belonged to the Braun-Menéndez wool-growing dynasty but, in my contacts with her, she was something of a free spirit. While donating the park to the Argentine government, the Tompkinses retained a small section that includes the former big house as what is now Hostería Monte León. There, Silvia was contented to tend her organic garden as a Tompkins employee, so long as it let her remain in a place she loved – living in the simple trailer pictured here.

Sadly, the same day that Doug Tompkins died, I learned from Silvia’s husband that she had also died several months ago. While I didn’t know her really well, I always looked forward to seeing her at Monte León, where “Patagonia without Silvia” will be as much an oxymoron as “Patagonia without Tompkins.”

Conservation Conversation: Kris Tompkins's Patagonia, Part 1

Earlier this year, I stayed at the new lodge at Valle Chacabuco, the ambitious Chilean conservation project of environmental philanthropists Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins. In the course of my brief stay, I had the opportunity for an extended conversation with Kris (pictured above, center, at the lodge) over the proposed Parque Nacional Patagonia, including several topics related to the park and their other projects.

Because the conversation was so lengthy, I’m breaking it up into two parts; part two will appear in the near future. It covers their projects in both Chile and Argentina, under the auspices of the non-profit NGO Conservación Patagónica (CP).

WBB: I’ve met Doug before, and I’ve met you extremely briefly. Doug is in the press a lot more than you are.

KMT: A lot more.

WBB: I don’t know much about you personally – can you give me a nutshell biography?

KMT: I was born in California…fourth generation ranching family. I went to college, graduated and started working with Yvon Chouinard, who had climbing equipment for a couple years and then in 1973 we started Patagonia company. I started running that business a couple years later and retired in 1993 to move to southern Chile with Doug to start working in conservation.

WBB: Do you spend all your time here in South America? I understand you spend the summer in Pumalín and the winter in Iberá (Argentina).

KMT: Yes. I mean, we’re residents of the United States, we go between Chile, the United States and Argentina, but the great majority of our time is here. Our time is spent six months in Chile and six months in Argentina, being based out of those two places – we move around a lot.

WBB: With regard to Valle Chacabuco (pictured above), when did you acquire the place? Did you do so with the idea of creating a park?

KMT: In 2004. When we started coming through here in 1993, we looked at it as the kind of place you would like to turn into a park. We talked to the owner about it and he wasn’t necessarily interested, so we just went on and did our things and then, several years later, we heard that it might be up for sale, and that’s how it got started.

WBB: These were the Belgians? How long did it take to arrange the purchase? Were there any other bidders?

KMT: Yes, it was Francisco De Smets. To answer the first part of your question, it took about a year and four months from the time he said he was considering selling to the time that we actually took over. A lot of that was spent negotiating the price that we were prepared to pay versus what he felt was acceptable. Once a deal was struck, it got out into the press that and there was a group, non-government related, that was opposed to the deal. They put up a competing bid and that took about four months of very public back-and-forth about who would end up with Valle Chacabuco. Finally, at the very last hour, we were able to make a bid and close in a way that the owner thought was appropriate. It was brutal.

WBB: Who was the competitor? Was he planning to continue it as a wool estancia?

KMT: Ricardo Ariztía. Mr Chicken, though he has many other holdings besides chickens. He and about five other guys, for anything but conservation.

WBB: What’s the area of the estancia?

KMT: We originally bought about 173,000 acres. Since then, we’ve added three of four nearby inholdings to the park. We have one neighbor who’s not interested in selling. He’s surrounded by us and a touch of Reserva Nacional Jeinimeni. He has sheep and cattle.

WBB: How does this differ from Pumalín in setting it up, since this is not going to be a private nature reserve? What's the difference between the two projects? Will Conaf take over?

KMT: Well, of course, the landscape is different. We hope Pumalín will become a national park too. Both will fall under the new Ministry of the Environment, and will be going to whatever new national park system that they are going to create.

WBB: Is there a timeline?

KMT: The timeline was to have Valle Chacabuco donated by 2017. That was always the timeline, but these things are very opportunistic, often politically driven, so it could be sooner. It just depends on who the president is and all the infrastructure is set, and we feel the park is ready to go toward a donation. Then you have to see what the timing is. Our idea is not to hold onto it, but to make it into a national park.

WBB: By the infrastructure, you mean finishing the buildings, campgrounds…?

KMT: Campgrounds, trails, everything you’d find in a world-class national park.

WBB: Where are the campgrounds going to be, mostly along the highway?

KMT: The principal ones, certainly, the biggest of them all will be at the foot of this valley, and another at Casa Piedra as you go up toward the [Argentine] border. We will have a few campsites up in Lago Chico and other places, such as Lago Cochrane. They won’t be big fancy campgrounds, but there’ll be designated places where people can camp.

WBB: Does this property extend south to Lago Cochrane?

KMT: We go all the way to the lake, and then all the way to the border along the lake. The national reserve is contiguous.

WBB: How open to visitors is the park at the moment? Are there enough campgrounds functioning at the moment?

KMT: That’s the thing, that’s why we need to get two campgrounds going immediately because we’ve got visitors and, other than the lodge (pictured above), we have a little campground back here where stragglers and volunteers camp out, but that’s not a public campground per se. People can use it, but it’s not what you want visitors to be using. So people are welcome, but usually for the day, or they’re stuck in the working campground.

WBB: Will the facilities resemble those at Pumalín, in terms of what they offer in the campgrounds and such?

KMT: Yes, you know, a group area for cooking, some individual campsites, with little quinchos, and then a lot of places where people put up their tents and use the public bathrooms and showers.

WBB: Cold showers?

KMT: Yes.

WBB: Before we get onto that, I want to bring up the issue you mentioned of presidential power, whoever happens to be in power at the time. How has the current president responded to initiatives like this?

KMT: As Chilean presidents go, I think Sebastián [Piñera] has got a real chance to be remembered as a president who is very concerned about conservation. He has his own conservation project.

WBB: I have been to Tantauco, at least on the edges of it.

KMT: He’s also declared some areas as new protected areas. Is it a lot, well, he’s only been in office a year, but he certainly understands the necessity to have active protected areas, and that’s pretty rare.

WBB: Can he bring along the rest of his constituents, or his party, on the issue? If not, can he bring along enough of them?

KMT: I have no idea, but I doubt it. Teddy Roosevelt didn’t either. Chile has changed a lot since we started 20 years ago. We had a guest here the other night, a friend of ours, from the business community of Chile, and he has a significant place here on the other side of Lago Cochrane, and he really sees that as a private conservation initiative. Andrónico Luksic has a place down in Villa O’Higgins that they consider to be a conservation project. Little by little, things shift, just as they did in the United States.

WBB: Even now there remains a lot of opposition to expanding protection of public lands in the United States. Just in terms of infrastructure, I was surprised when I got in here yesterday to see the size of the restaurant. Are you anticipating tour buses coming through?

KMT: Yes. In another 25 years, you have to imagine Yellowstone when it was first designated a protected area, not a national park yet, there was almost no way to get up there until they put the train in. You have to imagine this park and other parks like it 25 or 50 years from now when there will be a lot of people coming, up from El Calafate and over, when Ruta 40 is paved.

WBB: That’s progressing faster than the Carretera Austral.

KMT: I mean, it’s happening fast over there and here.

WBB: Would you expect an expansion of something like the lodge here?

KMT: That’s not in the master plan, I can tell you that for sure. But after a certain point, we won’t be the ones to decide that.

WBB: You are encouraging people who have an interest in conservation, who have the means, to become donors.

KMT: We have an active fund-raising program for this project. Little Conservación Patagonia cannot possibly create this 650,000-acre park without partners. Impossible. It’s too big. CP started in the year 2000, the first project we did was the Monte León National Park. Have you been there?

WBB: I have been to Monte León (pictured above) several times. Looking at it from a distance, it seems it was simpler to accomplish that project on the Argentine side, or at least quicker, than it was to do this in Chile, at Pumalín. Would that fair to say?

KMT: They’re so different. Pumalín (pictured above) is almost 800,000 acres, and Monte León was a one-purchase, 155,000-acre sheep estancia that was going broke. It’s so difficult to compare the two. Monte León was fast because right after we made the donation, [the late former Argentine president] Néstor Kirchner came into power and he’s from Río Gallegos, and in order to make it a real national park you have to cede jurisdiction from [Santa Cruz] province to the federal government, and the provinces hate the federal government. But Kirchner came into power just months before the Río Gallegos legislature had to vote on that and he called up and effectively said, “I don’t want to look like a schmoe, everybody get in line and vote for this thing.”

WBB: So it was good timing.

KMT: So much in life is good timing. Monte León would have languished as a national park, but without real jurisdiction if Kirchner hadn’t happened to come into power then. He’d been governor forever of Santa Cruz and was able to strong-arm them – ceding jurisdiction requires a 100 percent legislative vote. Imagine trying to get that – that’s why it was so fast. We did it in 18 months. Little CP can manage that kind of project, which we did and we did it fast, but the scale and complexity of this project is different, and so this is the only project we have where we have partners and we absolutely couldn’t do it without them.

WBB: This is the first one where you’re using partners? How many partners are there? All foreign partners, or Chilean partners as well?

KMT: It’s the only one. There are many partners. Ever since we brought the property, I couldn’t have waltzed in here and spent enough money to have bought the initial property, US$10 million. We could do a lot of that, but we couldn’t do all of it.

The partners are mostly foreign, some European, one Chinese man who’s a business partner and the rest from the States.

WBB: Do you still run into objections because the participation is so overwhelmingly foreign?

KMT: We don’t get any objections to it, because this project is 100 percent run by Chileans. This project pays Chilean taxes, people have never cared nor would they analyze where all the funding has come from, they know that CP is a US-based public charity. Where the funding comes from, we don’t hide it, it’s no secret, but what people care about is who’s working here, who helps make the decisions about what’s going to happen, just as they wondered about with Pumalín and Corcovado, will we make national parks out of it? Well, now we have a track record for doing so, so I don’t think people worry about that. Certainly the government’s not worried about it.

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In Patagonia: a Poorly Planned Road Trip

Last Sunday’s New York Times travel section featured Latin America and, but for a piece on Panamá and brief mentions of Belize and Nicaragua, it’s almost entirely on South America. It goes from the top (Colombia) to the tip (Patagonia), and even included a two-page spread on Suriname, an underrated destination that I once covered for a rival guidebook company whose name is best left unmentioned.

I almost always appreciate coverage of a region that gets so little attention from the mainstream press but, that said, an account of a so-called “road trip” through Argentine Patagonia was a botched opportunity. Author Brienne Walsh planned to drive the legendarily desolate Ruta 40 – which I have described as “Patagonia’s loneliest road” - south from Bariloche to El Calafate. In the article, she claims that a well-known international car rental agency would not allow her and a friend to take their vehicle down the route because of safety concerns, specifically “black ice and potholes.”

That’s not totally unreasonable. While I’ve driven this route at least ten times, I’ve never done so in winter. At the same time, it’s not so much the road conditions – much of Ruta 40 is now well-paved and potholes are fewer even in the remaining gravel sections – as the shortage of services.  Beyond Esquel, about 300 km south of Walsh’s starting point, fuel, food and accommodations are even scarcer than in summer.

Thus, Walsh and her companion had to make the long drive southeast across the steppe from Esquel to Comodoro Rivadavia. Even though they did take advantage of the route to visit the remarkable Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento (pictured above), a fascinating petrified forest, before heading south of Comodoro, they wasted much of the limited winter daylight.

In fact, poor planning caused them to miss at least one major attraction. Their hotel porter in Bariloche suggested they visit Puerto San Julián, which they finally skipped in favor of continuing south to Río Gallegos and El Calafate. I can’t disagree with that, especially in winter, but they totally missed the route’s most appealing destination, the dramatic headlands of wildlife-rich Parque Nacional Monte León (pictured above), midway between San Julián and Río Gallegos. While the wildlife is less abundant in winter, the scenery on this brief detour is still rewarding.

Certainly Walsh and her companion deserve credit for visiting the Moreno Glacier in winter, when there are far fewer visitors. But their trip would have gone much better had they started in Puerto Madryn – gateway to the whale-watching site of Península Valdés (pictured above) – and avoided the long drive across the Patagonian steppe. They could still have detoured to the petrified forest and had time to visit Monte León as well. As it was, poor planning led to lost opportunities.

Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires in Millbrae (San Mateo County)

Thursday September 29 will mark the last of four digital slide presentations on the fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires, at various branches of the San Mateo Public Library. This event starts at 1 p.m. at the Millbrae Library (1 Library Avenue, Millbrae, CA 94030, tel. 650/697-7607). There will be ample time for questions and answers, and books (also including Moon Argentina and Moon Chile) will be on sale (at a discount).

Next month, I will be on the road promoting the new third edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia. Most of the events will be in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I will also be appearing in Seattle and Bellingham, Washington; Vancouver BC; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Pasadena, California. Watch this space for details.