In 1991, American businessman Douglas Tompkins, who had co-founded the outdoor clothing companies The North Face and Esprit, bought a semi-abandoned plot of land in the Renihue River Valley in southern Chile, drawn by the region's ancient, untouched temperate rainforest. What began as a personal effort to protect one threatened valley grew, over the following decades, into one of the largest private conservation projects in history. Tompkins and his foundation went on to acquire vast tracts of surrounding wilderness, eventually donating hundreds of thousands of acres back to the Chilean state. That land, combined with existing government-held territory, was formally established in 2018 as Pumalin Douglas Tompkins National Park, a protected area covering 994,332 acres, larger than Yosemite National Park in the United States. What makes this legacy especially notable is that Tompkins never lived to see the park bear his name. It was his wife Kristine who carried the project across its final, most consequential stretch, turning private land into public protection after his death in 2015.
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