A Wild Idea

by Jonathan Franklin

  The ad was placed at the Santiago international airport, and also on a billboard near the Chilean Congressional building in Valparaiso. Chile’s power elite couldn’t help but notice it. A fiery controversy exploded. How could Tompkins say that HidroAysén was going to scar the views of Torres del Paine?! Executives for the electricity consortium were furious, insisting that electrical lines in front of Torres del Paine was flat-out unthinkable. The ad wasn’t fair, they howled. The pro-dam forces slid right into Tompkins’s trap. The Patagonia Defense Council was ready with a reply—“If it’s not okay there, it’s not okay anywhere in Patagonia.” “The thing is, that’s a metaphor,” said Juan Pablo Orrego, an architect of the anti-dam messaging. “And the guys from the company, they reacted, so the ads were very successful. Douglas was amazing. It made people think about what a power line does to the landscape.”

  Instead of talking about the dam, or talking about the possibility of lower monthly electric bills for millions, Tompkins defined the dam as a referendum on beauty. He then suggested that the advertisements include a mock-up of the power lines crossing in front of the statues of remote Easter Island with the slogan “Here It Would Be Inacceptable—in Aysén Also.”

  Delighted that his bet on beauty was paying dividends, Tompkins poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a series of ads. He hammered home the message that HidroAysén was sullying the nation’s international image. “We never focused on John Q. Public. This was oriented to decision makers, to senators, to public officials,” said Hernan Mladinic, the sociologist working on the campaign. “That’s why we spent money on big billboards leaving and entering the airport. We wanted to influence those kind of people.”

  ENDESA knew how to handle powerful Chilean politicians. They co-opted or hired them. Among all the companies in Chile, ENDESA was among the top ten that made political contributions to the center-left coalition that governed Chile following the dictatorship. To stay tight with the extreme right-wing, ENDESA hired Pinochet’s lawyer, Pablo Rodriguez Grez, a key intellectual ally of the dictatorship, as general counsel. He immediately accused the anti-dam activists of being violent fanatics. “These people are ecoterrorists!” Grez declared. As a longtime professor of law at the prestigious Universidad de Chile law school, his opinion mattered. In reality, it was Grez who was the suspected terrorist. Before the Pinochet dictatorship, a paramilitary group that he founded—Patria y Libertad—allied with CIA covert operators to sabotage the Salvador Allende government. Their activities included a bit of “accidental murder” along the way. Patria y Libertad was the CIA’s conduit to sabotage Chilean democracy, and Rodriguez Grez was one of the key operatives. Thirty-five years later, Rodriguez Grez was not in the streets stirring up trouble; instead, he was able to speed-dial a fascist, should he need their services.

  State-sponsored assassinations and torture were no longer possible in post-Pinochet Chile, though the latent threat of violence had often worked to paralyze activists. “They ransacked our offices. We had an old house with a thick wood door, and then the owner had put an iron grate [on it] with a big padlock. It got yanked off,” said Orrego, describing an incident during the unsuccessful battles to save the Biobío River. “They had to use a big four-wheel-drive truck or something to do that. There was nothing left inside: computers, telephone, fax, everything was gone. In the morning when we came in, they had sprayed graffiti with dollar-bill signs everywhere that read ‘Stop Proselytizing, You Bastards!’”

  Patricio Rodrigo, the head of Chile Ambiente NGO and a strategist on the pro-Patagonia campaigns with Tompkins, had shots fired at his office. “I got horrible phone messages that said, ‘We’ve disappeared people for a lot less than a $3 billion dam project.’” As ENDESA and its allies fueled a backlash against the environmentalists, pickup trucks and mining vehicles in the region began to sport fresh bumper stickers that read “Patagonia Without Tompkins!”

  As the heat on Tompkins grew in the Chacabuco Valley, on April 30, 2008, his world was further rattled by a 5.4 earthquake. The quake’s epicenter was in the heart of his planned park in Pumalín. The rattling lasted six seconds and caused little concern among his staff or the residents in El Amarillo and nearby Chaiten. Chileans are accustomed to strong earthquakes, and it was in Southern Chile where scientists in 1960 recorded the strongest quake on record: 9.2 on the Richter scale.

  Although it was common for the ground to shake, tremble, and rattle, residents in El Amarillo, Chaiten, and Puerto Montt—even across the border in Argentina—were baffled. The movements stopped for five or six hours and then, with a shuddering Bam, a tremor alerted animals and humans alike that an epic movement was afoot. A humming rattled from inside the earth; some residents described a cacophony of eerie shrieks. So many dogs barked through the night that residents barely slept. Aftershocks became so frequent they began to feel like a preview not a sequel. On May 1, eleven short tremors rippled the parklands in and around the Tompkins headquarters. Earthquake sirens wailed through the night as an atonal symphony groaned from underground. One survivor later described the subterranean soundtrack as “galloping horses mixed with screams.”

  By the early hours of May 2, earthquake tremors peaked at twenty per hour. Local residents became more fearful and described the shaking as so violent they feared the ground beneath their feet might split open and swallow the entire town. Virtually no one in the Chilean government or in remote Patagonia realized that in the year 7420 BC a nearby volcano had exploded, sending lava, ash, and destruction across the river delta—now the center of town for Chaiten and its 4,600 residents. Fewer still could be expected to understand that after 9,400 years of dormancy, a volcano in the heart of the Pumalín nature sanctuary was awakening.

  At 3:40 a.m., on May 2, 2008, a massive explosion punched a hole through the side of 2,800-foot-high “Chaiten Hill” as it was marked on most maps. Throughout the pre-dawn hours and into the early morning, a plume of grey ash rippled 10,000, then 20,000 feet and finally 50,000 feet into the atmosphere. Burning cinders, blocks of rocks, and millions of tons of particles spouted from the funnel. By dawn, townfolk gathered by TV sets as the governor and newscasters described “The eruption of Volcano Michinmahuida.”

  Hearing the news while he and Kris were in Buenos Aires, Doug glanced at an image of the explosion and instantly realized the governor and broadcasters were completely wrong. Studying the landscape during thousands of hours flying at low altitude, Doug had developed a photographic memory of Patagonia using notable features like inlets, fjords, and volcanos for guidance. Michinmahuida was his volcano, on his property, and had a postcard-perfect-shaped volcanic cone. What he was seeing in the media was a warped hillside. Whatever is exploding, Tompkins told his staff, it’s not Michinmahuida.

  Back in Chaiten, the eruption was so nearby that residents thought they might soon be cooked alive by lava. Heat from the eruption melted snow, and sediment from the volcano poured into the river Rio Blanco bordering Chaiten. Within hours of the explosion, the Rio Blanco mutated into a landslide of volcanic ash, sodden dirt, roiling sand, uprooted trees, and noisily rolling boulders the size of a pick-up truck. Gushing down the mountainside, the river changed course and through the center of town. It stripped away Chaiten’s main street, one of the few that was paved. Watching a webcam monitoring his Chaiten offices, Tompkins saw water trickle in, then pool, and when it was halfway up the tires on his pickup, he realized that a catastrophe was near.

  Emergency evacuation plans were invented on the spot. Fishing boats were packed to the rail with residents. No suitcases. No pets. The docks were soon a cacophony of howling dogs, wailing children, and harried citizens. A gray river the consistency of cement washed away entire blocks of the village center. Swirling waves of sand and ash buried homes under tons of debris. In video footage taken the day the volcano exploded, Tompkins is shown taking a glance at one of the photos of the volcano plume, making a very quick, and accurate, estimation of the altitude it reached. “That’s way u
p there, 20,000 meters,” he said. “This looks like a nuclear bomb went off.”

  With his regional office flooded and his visitor center demolished, Tompkins lost the precious momentum to finally create Pumalín National Park—gained after seventeen years of struggle. He was stunned. Was he fated to be the man who almost made Pumalín National Park? Four months earlier, he had inaugurated the Pumalín visitor center. Now much of his park infrastructure was buried, isolated, or covered in ashes.

  During the ensuing days, clouds of thick ash washed across the zone, disrupting airplane flight paths as far away as Uruguay. The new park entrance had just been christened for the growing stream of backpackers, VIP nature safari operators, and potential donors. The eruption changed everything. Tens of thousands of acres of forest were affected by the explosion. Buildings were buried, their roofs collapsed from the weight of the ashes. Green pastures were painted gray, as if cement had been poured across the landscape.

  Flying over the park, the volcano still smoking, Tompkins admitted the volcano “caused us all sorts of headaches and lots of money. It’s changed the way we’re doing things. We’re having to postpone or cancel projects so we can pay for the damages.”

  In addition to his full-time offensive versus the dams in Chacabuco Valley, Tompkins doubled down on his commitment to El Amarillo, a tiny village that included many families with whom he’d worked over the years. Doug and Kris spent less time at their Reñihue ranch and, increasingly, slept near the new entrance to the proposed Pumalín Park in El Amarillo. To better understand local sentiments and glean insights into his reconstruction projects, Doug accepted the vice presidency of the El Amarillo Neighborhood Council.

  The volcano upended Doug’s carefully laid plans for Pumalín Park. Entire regions of the park that had been restored, cultivated, and practically manicured were now destroyed. Instead of polishing up his visitor’s center, he had to start from scratch.

  Doug was increasingly stressed and frustrated. He needed a change of scenery. Tompkins had been talking for years about joining Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd, to join other activists in confronting Japanese whalers. But conservation work in Patagonia and Iberá took priority. Kris pushed. She told him to get on the boat, that he would regret not going. When he agreed to finally go, Kris was relieved. Watson called it Operation Musashi, after a famous Japanese swordsman-philosopher immortalized for using two swords simultaneously as he battled legions of enemies.

  Chapter 16

  Operation Musashi

  You’re at the end of the world; it’s just you and the whalers. There were some big, big confrontations. Ramming ships. We threw stink bombs, we threw paint bombs, we shot water cannons into the exhaust pipes of the ships. It must have been exciting for Doug. He definitely had this mischievous look on his face.

  —WIETSE VAN DER WERF, founder of Sea Rangers, a Dutch ocean conservation group

  In December 2008, Doug Tompkins hefted a duffel bag aboard an old ship at port in Hobart, Australia, and reported for eight weeks’ volunteer duty on a mission to confront Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Ocean. He was sixty-five years old, by far the elder statesman of a crew that included a Dutch violin-maker, a retired US Navy officer, and the bearded captain, Paul Watson. For a decade Tompkins had funded Watson’s antiwhaling navy, yet this was their first mission together.

  Operation Musashi’s goals were to disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet and thus put an end to plans to kill minke whales and fin whales. Because whale populations were so decimated, the International Whaling Commission put exact limits on the slaughter. For 2009, the kill was set at 732 whales. The Japanese government authorized the hunt under the excuse of “scientific research,” but this annual whale slaughter always managed to supply fresh whale steaks to restaurants in Hong Kong and Tokyo where the traditional glass of sake was served with a side of whale blubber. For the activists, one whale was too many. As the 2008–2009 Japanese whaling season began, Tompkins volunteered his time and also shelled out a quarter million dollars to pay for the ship’s diesel fuel during the months-long hunt.

  Captain Watson zeroed in on the Japanese processing ship the Nisshin Maru, the nerve center of the multiship operation. If he tracked the ship, he could then send commando missions using inflatable Zodiacs to interfere with the harpoons, destroy the nets, and foul the ship’s propeller. It was a dangerous mission with little chance of success. “We, with one single ship, have to find a fleet of six in an area of water that is over a million square miles,” said Peter Hammerstedt, the first officer. “The best comparison is riding a bicycle and trying to find a caravan of RVs somewhere in America and there is no direct road to get there.”

  On his initial walk around the ship Tompkins noted the wobbly hand railings, an oil patch on the floor of the engine room, and a VHS radio powered by a hand crank. Designed for patrolling the rough waters off the coast of Scotland, the Steve Irwin was a 190-foot-long fishing boat without an ice-shielded hull. Bumping into a block of ice below water line could sink the ship in a matter of minutes. The closest rescue ship, a proper icebreaker like the Polar Star, was berthed in Sydney harbor, a five-day voyage away if weather was favorable in a swath of ocean that sailors dubbed the Ferocious ’50, Satanic ’60, and Savage ’70s.

  Few of the activists on the crew of the Steve Irwin had heard of Doug Tompkins, and he did little to reveal himself. A team from Discovery Channel was on board, filming the second season of Liz Bronstein’s documentary reality show Whale Wars. As the film crew roamed the boat searching for characters, Tompkins ignored them. He avoided their efforts to interview him. He had joined the mission to meet the young activists and defend animals, and the last thing he wanted was more publicity. He was engulfed in enough of that back on land.

  Paul Watson knew a thing or two about media relations. The media access he had given to Discovery Channel was strategic. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was based in Santa Monica, California—close enough to Hollywood to ensure that donations came in celebrity-sized chunks. Sean Connery, William Shatner, Christian Bale, and Pierce Brosnan had all donated cash to Sea Shepherds. The actress Darryl Hannah worked as crew. Captain Watson was committed to a long-term strategy for protecting marine biodiversity; he believed it was criminal for the Japanese whalers to use a scientific loophole in international whaling treaties to continue the slaughter of these magnificent creatures.

  Navigating south from Hobart, Tompkins braced in his cot as the Steve Irwin rolled and pitched, banging through waves forty feet high. The first storm system they faced was the size of Australia and knocked out the gyroscope. The crew was queasy, several volunteers were vomiting, and then icebergs started showing up—first on radar, then through binoculars. A volunteer named Mal Holland was a ship captain in his own right, but on the Steve Irwin he worked as a deckhand. He described the dangers as “really mountainous seas, unqualified people, and ice.”

  Tompkins was assigned the job of quartermaster, meaning he worked on the bridge and used binoculars to scout the horizon for dangers and reported to the captain. His shift ran 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. As the ship journeyed farther south, the nights grew shorter until it was never dark. Tompkins scanned the ocean for lurking icebergs, which were few and far between when compared to the waves of wildlife flashing before his eyes. A sooty albatross with an eight-foot wingspan drafted the ship, floating for hours without flapping. Then the albatross would zigzag along a cresting wave, darting inches above the spray. Pods of humpbacks, fin whales, minke whales, and orcas surfaced within easy view. “There were so many amazing, beautiful whales,” declared Molly Kendall, another deckhand. “They come right up to the ship. If we were a harpoon ship, it would be so easy.”

  While off duty in the rough Antarctic seas, Tompkins spent hours hunched over his laptop, pecking at the keyboard while thirty-foot swells rocked the boat. “Everyone has this general malaise about them in rough seas; even if you’re not seasick, it saps your energy,” said Mal Holland. “The last t
hing you want to do is look at a screen, or read emails, but that’s what he was doing, and a lot of it.” Through a weak satellite connection Tompkins shared architectural sketches with the team in Argentina, discussed ideas about remodeling the visitor center at Pumalín Park in Chile, and sent love notes to Kris—his beloved “Birdy.” He was also finalizing the abandonment of his dearest organic farming projects. The 2008 financial crisis had sucked down his cash; money sinks like the 18,000-acre Laguna Blanca farm, a work of art from the air but a hugely expensive agricultural experiment on the ground, were no longer feasible. Tompkins was reluctantly cutting back his largest investments in organic farming. This allowed him to conserve cash for core projects. Tompkins lamented that he wasn’t twenty-five years old and able to dedicate a full half century to his cherished agricultural projects.

  Aboard the ship, his internet connection was frustratingly slow. It sometimes took an hour for a photo to download, and Tompkins paid dearly for it: the bill for his ship-to-shore communications totaled $25,000.

  Approaching the coast of Antarctica after a brutal ten-day navigation, Captain Watson instructed the team to find the Nisshin Maru. Online sleuths attempted to hack the boat’s email, track its GPS position, or at least unearth details from the crew’s online posts. This season, the Sea Shepherds had brought a new weapon: a Bell helicopter. The gusts, the extreme cold, and the constant clouds and humidity made this among the most dangerous areas on Earth to pilot any kind of aircraft, but when the chopper lifted off the deck, within ten minutes it could run a survey that saved the Steve Irwin an entire day’s search. The helicopter altered the rules of engagement. Visibility was best in the early morning hours, so the pilot often lifted off for a two-hour morning flight. On the third day of his search, flying an hour from the Steve Irwin, the pilot spotted a wake and then the shapes of ships. He had found the Japanese fleet.