A Wild Idea

by Jonathan Franklin

  After months of exercise work, and puppet shows portraying the predators the birds would face, Gabelli had a group of macaws ready for release into the wild. Some of the birds would wear radio-tracking devices. “Before we released the macaws, we had this big campaign and provided a phone number. ‘If you see one, call us and let us know.’ It’s the macaw hotline,” said Kris. “And we got calls. People took pictures. Told us the macaw was ‘about this big. He’s in our backyard.’ ‘And this is the kind of tree he sat in!’ People went nuts.”

  “You have to convince society that keeping natural ecosystems with integrity—which means keeping big animals that were lost, like bison, or wolves, or tigers, or cougars, or jaguars—makes more sense than other options,” said Jimenez, who worked for years on the rewilding efforts in Iberá. “Once you know that, you use every tale, every story, every myth that you can induce from local and national society. If you use arguments and reasons that only resound with conservationist groups, you’re going to lose. What do people really care about? They care about jobs, they care about pride, they care about hope, they care about culture, they care about patriotism.”

  After environmental nonprofits in Brazil and Paraguay offered male jaguars to commence the breeding program, Doug and Kris authorized construction of a massive Jaguar Reintroduction Center. The construction and plans of the JRC were on the scale of a metropolitan zoo. Hundreds of acres were mapped and elaborate pens designed to allow jaguars to move from small veterinary pods to small breeding pens to initial release pens and then gargantuan 70-acre pens. There were so many structures that when flying into San Alonso the jaguar installations stretched for what seemed like miles across the flatlands.

  Biologist Sebastian di Martino knew that the reintroduction of the jaguar was crucial to overall health of the wetlands. “Just as the return of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park recalibrated whole ecosystems that had fallen out of balance, jaguars can restore these wetlands,” he said. “Rewilding is also revitalizing the economy of small communities throughout Corrientes Province through wildlife-watching and related services. We have examples of small towns whose economy is based mostly on ecotourism and wildlife.”

  Di Martino knew that he needed to first release females since they have “smaller territories and disperse less.” The strategy was to build a healthy, genetically diverse population. But given all the unknowns, he’d do what he could to keep the cats inside the borders of the park and as far from humans as possible. One incident. One setback. Or the death of either a jaguar or a person would set the project back years.

  As they spent more time in the community, Doug and Kris realized the Correntinos tradition included a profound veneration for local wildlife. The annual carnival parade and celebration featured feathers and tropical colors. “A gaucho is kinda like a peacock; he likes to show off,” said Sofia, describing how, together with Kris, she burrowed into local culture looking for a route to reintroduce and rewild animals native to the area while building upon local traditions.

  Tompkins designed a series of fifty posters with a slogan he coined: “Let Corrientes Become Corrientes Again.” The posters featured native animals that needed protection, including the maned wolf, the caiman, and the jaguar. The posters deliberately excluded the Tompkins logo or any indication of a foreign hand. Distributed free to kiosks, supermarkets, post offices, hotels, and bars, the posters proved to be a hit with both adults and schoolchildren. The Conservation Land Trust also provided local school districts with study aides and classroom materials about the animals. Semester by semester, class by class, year by year, animals long extinct crept back into the marshlands and the school curriculum. Schoolchildren were learning to love the land and its animals. Given another ten years, Doug and Kris bet that the local connection to wildlife would grow significantly.

  * * *

  Doug was like Atlas, taking the weight of the world on his shoulders. You could see that, and it was definitely affecting his mood. He would get angry and frustrated. But what was so wild was how much beauty was in his life. He was dark, and there was gloom, it was kind of like doom porn that he would send out in these emails, another article from another dark, unknown writer from northern Europe. And I’d read it and just want to shoot myself because it was so dark. The gloom is coming, and there is no way out. So he was consuming a lot of dark stuff, but then somehow in his work, he was translating that into a solution, or an option, which was the creation of these beautiful farms, and these beautiful parks, the creation of these beautiful books, beautiful images. On one side what you had was doom and the end of the world, and on the other side he was cranking out beauty.

  —WESTON BOYLES

  * * *

  The couple were sure that community support was essential. Otherwise their planned park in the Iberá wetlands wouldn’t last a century. To further solidify their efforts, they also planned an economic renaissance for Iberá based on what they called “The Production of Nature,” which argued that conservation opened a path to sustainable economic development.

  For years suspicions toward outsiders and abandonment by Argentina’s federal government had obscured the larger truth: Iberá was a wildlife and tourist gold mine. Kayaking, bird watching, nature tours, and African-style safaris could all become a base for a sustainable local economy. “What we offered was a paradigm shift, trying to give economic opportunity so that the ten towns had the chance to develop via wildlife tourism,” said Heinonen. “The ten communities understood that we were offering something productive—the production of nature, via nature itself. This idea came about from seeing how the people in the area lived, because Corrientes is very poor. Trekking and hiking? They don’t do that, so the local people can’t connect to nature via recreational activities on the ground, but they can connect with it via work. That’s why the idea of generating something that could give work opportunities, to produce something, made all the difference.”

  To convince local critics, Tompkins proposed taking local authorities on a tour of national parks in Africa. Sergio Flinta, the ever-less-recalcitrant Argentine senator, agreed to go. “My trip to Africa helped me to understand what it is to generate an economy based on wildlife,” he said. “Seeing Kruger National Park was very important for me, because it is a mixed reserve, provincial and national. I got all that conceptual framework and applied it to our initiative. Iberá Park in Corrientes has a lot of South Africa in it, and a lot of Costa Rica. The African component is the reintroduction of species, and the Costa Rican component is the relations with local people and local development.”

  Locals had long doubted that tourists would fly to Argentina and pay to see an anteater or caiman. But as the stream of tourists grew, and more and more visitors rented boats, took photo safaris, bought meals and supplies, and stayed in local hostels, the lesson was clear: people would pay to see caiman and capybara. “Tourism is the easiest way to link fierce beasts like jaguars with jobs because people understand it,” said Jimenez, the biologist. “Once they see other areas where people have improved their quality of life through ecotourism based on wildlife, local people say, ‘Okay, we’re going to do it!’”

  For Doug, public access was also a crucial part of his strategy to protect the wetlands. He was certain that if locals began to see the wetlands as a magnet for tourists, they would consider it a wealth held in common. Then they would fight to protect the wildlife as they held a stake in the overall ecological health of the wetlands. Building a public dock and promoting the idea of exploring the inaccessible wetlands was an evolution from his strategy—a decade earlier in Pumalín—to oppose all development. Now he was sending his emissaries first, having them stake out the unclaimed land and teach locals to take a stand for nature by developing tourism.

  Among those who noticed what Doug and Kris Tompkins were doing in Corrientes was Argentina’s tourism ministry. These officials understood the value of developing Iberá with an emphasis on sustainable tourism as its development mod
el. Not long after they grasped the potential of Iberá, they shuffled the country’s tourist and infrastructure budget to pour millions of dollars into access roads, campgrounds, park guards, and marketing campaigns. Senator Flinta became a prized ally, not only for politicians, but for local businessmen and power brokers who suddenly realized that Tompkins was going to win the cultural war, as he had so audaciously predicted during his first talks at village meetings a decade earlier.

  As the Iberá wetlands became ever more defined as an eco-tourism destination, they gained provincial acceptance, and then national and international recognition. A peculiar and noteworthy tailwind developed: everyone wanted to be part of it. “Those who were enemies and blocked access to the park now donate a strip of land for a road,” said Flinta, who included himself among the converts. “Those who were staunch critics to public access now can’t say a thing.”

  Chapter 19

  The Route of Parks

  Take the chain of seventy-seven national parks in the United States; not one of them was formed without a conflict or a polemic or something. You have to work through this. Some of them took sixty years to form. We did, I have to say, pretty well, in comparison with most of the American national parks.

  —DOUG TOMPKINS

  In 2013, as Tompkins approached his seventieth birthday, he panicked. He could still hike for six hours in the backcountry, and his ninety-six-year old mother, Faith, was healthy, but he worried his time was nearly up. “I have so many things I’d like to do before my hourglass runs out,” he confessed in a personal letter. “Although in my heart of hearts I know nothing will stop the apocalypse, something in the system, almost genetically, propels me to work for beauty.”

  Tompkins was convinced of the need to save ever-more-vast tracts of wilderness. With the human population passing seven billion, he saw the window of opportunity to purchase intact ecosystems and to create new national parks slamming shut. “It was mind-boggling because he would be scheduled with meetings starting at eight in the morning all the way through the day, through dinner and sometimes afterwards,” remarked Linde Waidhofer, the landscape photographer who worked with Tompkins. The donors, when they flew down, were provided tours and updates on the varied conservation projects, further adding to the busy agenda. A yearslong campaign to create Yendegaia National Park finally saved a key swath of Tierra del Fuego, and although Pumalín was still far from being accepted, the momentum was shifting.

  Despite the clear evidence of a literally groundbreaking conservation project, money was tight. Generous grants from Patagonia Inc. and its founders, Malinda and Yvon Chouinard, filled key funding gaps. Yet funding was a perpetual struggle. “We get questions all the time from wealthy people interested in private conservation, asking ‘How did you do this? Can we meet? How can I do something like that? How can I protect this area I love?’ Doug always gave those people the red carpet treatment,” said Carolina Morgado. “When people like that come into our world, they find it wonderful, ‘All that Doug has done!’ and lately, ‘All that Kris has done.’ While they are here with us, everything is possible, but one step out of this house, or one step out of the park, and the neo-liberal demand to produce, to do things that generate money, takes over. It’s very hard to take that out of people. It’s like a chip inside.”

  Despite a combined fortune measured in the tens of millions of dollars, cash was a limiting factor for Doug and Kris’s conservation plans. Their conservation budget included salaries for a hundred employees in Chile and dozens more in Argentina. Rather than recruit a million individuals to donate a dollar each, Kris and Doug went for individuals who could drop a million. Doug taunted Nicolas Ibañez, who founded Walmart’s Chilean operations, thus making him a billionaire. “So, Nicolas, when you die, what is your tombstone going to read—‘Most important supermarket owner in Chile’?” Rather than take offense, the billionaire took notice.

  The few dedicated “high-net-worth individuals” who made the long journey to South America for facetime with Doug and Kris were not disappointed. Evening dinner with the couple was an elaborately casual affair. “There were guests at their house almost every night,” said the environmental activist and naturalist George Wuerthner. “Doug regularly met with political leaders, scientists, philanthropists, conservation activists, and well-known writers and artists. Sometimes world-class climbers or adventurers joined the group. There would be a spirited discussion.”

  Having scaled the summits of capitalism and conservation, Tompkins felt qualified to lecture his guests, even if they were celebrities at the level of the author David Quammen, or CNN’s founder, Ted Turner. “Unless we learn to share the Earth with all the other creatures on the planet, our own days are numbered,” he declared. “We need to teach our children that each person must pay his or her rent for living on the planet, and that means demanding of our governments to make biodiversity conservation a priority.”

  Emboldened by their success with Monte Léon National Park in Argentina and Corcovado National Park in Chile, Doug and Kris moved forward to consolidate a groundbreaking plan. What if they bundled all their Chilean properties into a single take-it-or-leave-it offer to the government? What if they raised the stakes, by putting all their land on the table? Doug knew this proposal was bold, and it would be debated by officials at the highest levels of the Chilean government.

  * * *

  I flew with him three times over Pumalín Park. On the last day, there was a lot of wind. I told him it was too dangerous to fly and he said, “Take it easy, this is like kayaking a river; you have to ride very carefully.” We took off, and he told me to strap myself in well, because we were going to be bouncing around. I put my camera, a big Hasselblad, into a backpack. I had another small bag, with a Nikon FM2, a classic, and away we went. It was impossible to take photos while up there, as we were moving around like the inside of a blender. We made it to a part of Comau Fjord, which runs south to north. There’s a section where you arrive to a fjord that’s got a perpendicular form, Cahuelmo Fjord. When we got to Cahuelmo, a type of wind tunnel formed with the wind coming from the east. It all gets funneled together and blows really fast. That wind hit the plane, and the plane started jumping. It was really bumping around. Doug and I weren’t talking. We had been wearing headphones, but his had fallen off because of all the movement of the plane, so we couldn’t talk any more. I thought we were going to crash. When we landed, I took my Hasselblad camera out of the plane, then looked for my Nikon, and suddenly I saw that the transparent acrylic roof of the plane had a hole in it. The hole was in the shape of a camera.

  —PABLO VALENZUELA, Chilean landscape photographer

  * * *

  In 2014, the Chilean government inaugurated a ferry route through a maze of coastal islands in southern Patagonia. The southern highway ended in the bay of Tortel, a fishing village where travelers could now drive aboard a ferry and be hauled through a spectacular maze of islands south where the road picked up again in Puerto Natales, the gateway to Patagonia’s most celebrated (and overvisited) national park—Torres del Paine.

  This land-sea-land route passed through the most untouched terrain in all of Patagonia. On a map the region looked like a giant with a hammer had shattered the land into a hundred jagged pieces. No overland road was feasible, so navigating the archipelago by sea was the only way to connect the regions. When Tompkins understood that this new sea route would unite disparate segments and isolated national parks scattered along the Southern Highway, he had a wild idea. Perhaps his wildest.

  Tompkins shelved his earlier arguments that the Southern Highway was an unpardonable scar on the landscape. Now he reimagined the rugged road as a spinal cord. He realized that the land and sea routes of the Southern Highway could connect a dozen national parks in Patagonia, from Alerce Andino park near Puerto Montt in the north, all the rugged thousand miles south to Tierra del Fuego. Tompkins needed an image, a unified concept. Then it came to him: he would rebrand the disparate ecosystems as
a single entity.

  Tompkins ordered his team to work crafting the campaign. He summoned a graphic designer, wildlife biologists, and key aides. Working morning to night, they designed a presentation for Chilean president Sebastian Piñera. Doug turned the concept over and over in his head, and was pleased. Here was a brand that would survive the test of time. After The North Face and Esprit de Corp, this third brand was designed to outlive the fads of fashion. For a lifelong collector, a man who cherished finely woven quilts and perfectly designed wooden chairs, this was his opus. He called it the Route of Parks.

  Tompkins understood that the Route of Parks would encompass glacier-covered Andean peaks, coastal lagoons, and thickly wooded jungles draped in moss and decorated with forests of ferns. It was a flourishing biodiversity reminiscent of a more pristine era. Even if most travelers would visit no more than several parks, they had an exceptional menu from which to pick and choose. Doug had invented a buffet-style offer to tempt the world. “Doug was not interested in tourism at all,” admitted Mladinic, who worked with Tompkins as an interlocutor with Chilean authorities. “Of course, we had lodges and trails because he believed that every park needs a basic public access infrastructure, but not because we wanted to have thousands of tourists coming. From his experience in Argentina, he was finding out that there was a healthy and fruitful partnership between tourism and conservation.”