He Saves the Rain Forest by Buying It

PUERTO MONTT, CHILE — If Thoreau were to come back to life, he might do with his book royalties something that Douglas Tompkins is doing with his private fortune: invest it in a swath of pristine woodlands in a remote South American country and convert it into a vast Walden Pond. But the eccentric tycoon who made his money from the sale of stock in his Esprit clothing chain has gone one step farther. After spending more than $10 million on 700,000 acres of spectacular temperate rain forest, mountain lakes and coastline in southern Chile, he offered to turn it over to his host country as a national park, with the sole proviso that it be declared a nature sanctuary. The Chilean government turned down the offer, denouncing Tompkins as a dangerous radical and his gift as a Trojan horse.

The Chilean government's seemingly perverse response is not altogether surprising. Truth is, it has good reason to be alarmed by Tompkins.

A self-professed "deep ecologist," Tompkins contributes millions of his foundation money to environmental groups that regard Homo sapiens, at best, as a single thread in the fabric of Earth's biodiversity and, at worst, as a willful destroyer of nature's grand design. No one is more detestable in Tompkin's radical cosmology than the industrial forester and land developer.

In an afterword in his book "Clearcut," Tompkins confides that flying his plane over devastated forests of British Columbia--hidden from public view--aroused a "green rage" that converted him into an environmental radical. He is an advocate of Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, who calls for a global council of sentient beings to feel our planet's cries of distress in our own bodies before taking remedial action.

Close inspection of the proposed Pumalin Park reveals why Tompkins has raised such a ruckus. His nearly 714,000 acres resemble an upended boot aimed at the heart of southern Chile. If he acquires the strip of land separating his two main holdings, Tompkins could effectively split the country in two, since his property straddles Chile at its narrowest point, a corridor running about 50 miles between the Pacific coast's Gulf of Ancud and the Argentine border.

Pumalin Park would thus become an effective buffer against the northward advance of loggers and land developers, which may be precisely what Tompkins has in mind.