Late US billionaire's record land gift lays Chile row to rest
SANTIAGO (AFP) -
Douglas Tompkins's widow vividly remembers the suspicions the late billionaire raised when he started buying up land in Patagonia, the natural paradise at the bottom of South America. Some accused him of preparing a storage site for American nuclear waste, she says. Others said he was starting a cult, still others that he wanted to launch a Jewish state -- even though he was raised Episcopalian. Now, just over one year after his death, she hopes her late husband's final wishes for the land will lay the controversy to rest for good.
Tompkins, the co-founder of The North Face outdoor label and clothing brand Esprit, has donated a tract of land the size of Rhode Island to the Chilean government as a national park -- the largest such donation in history. This week, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet accepted the 407,000-hectare (one million-acre) donation in a ceremony held in a verdant Patagonian meadow and attended by Tompkins's widow, Kristine McDivitt, a former CEO of the outdoor clothing and gear company Patagonia..
His plans to turn the land into national parks made him some powerful enemies in a Chile just emerging from the bloody 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Tompkins's opponents included president Eduardo Frei, whose administration stalled him on his first initiative, the creation of Pumalin Park -- a private nature reserve of 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles) in southern Chile.
And while the animosity faded over the years -- the parks Tompkins created are today broadly hailed as an environmental and tourism boon in both Chile and Argentina
http://www.france24.com/en/20170318-late-us-billionaires-record-land-gift-lays-chile-row-rest
