Douglas Tompkins
Born March 20, 1943
(March 20, 1943 –
December 8, 2015) was an American conservationist, outdoorsman,
philanthropist, filmmaker, agriculturalist, and businessman who
assembled and preserved the land which became the largest gift of
private land to government in South America.
Beginning in the
mid-1960s, he and Susie Tompkins Buell, his first wife, co-founded and
ran two companies: the outdoor equipment and clothing company The North
Face and the Esprit clothing company. Following their divorce and
Tompkins' departure from the business world in 1989, he became active in
environmental and land conservation causes.
In the 1990s Tompkins
and his second wife, Kris McDivitt Tompkins bought and conserved more
than 2 million acres (810,000 ha) of wilderness in Chile and Argentina,
exceeding that of any other private individuals in the region, thus
becoming among the largest private land-owners in the world. The
Tompkinses were focused on park creation, wildlife recovery, ecological
agriculture, and activism, with the goal of saving biodiversity.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
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