Warm- Up with a great story from Latin America 

Author: Klaus Fischer, ISWA, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Before the program of WasteNet 2nd Regional workshop will be  ready to appear in our website. We would like to warm you up with a gentle and great story about one person. A man who may give us an insight into sustainable environment for quality of life.

His name is Douglas Tompkins. Douglas Tompkins (born 1943 in New York) is an American environmentalist and a former businessman.  For a long time, Tompkins was the co-owner of the ESPRIT clothing company. In 1990 he sold the company and decided to focus his investments in the protection of nature. His first project was in Canada and he has since created reserves in Argentina and Chile. Afterwards he founded the Conservation Land Trust and has been president of this organisation since 1992.

He focuses on securing large, ecologically strategic terrains (usually big water reserves) and trying to recover undeveloped and untrammelled nature. Afterwards, he legally assures the irreversibility of this procedure and donates the lands to the administrations of national parks. The idea behind this is that national treasures are best preserved if not privatised.

Today, Tompkins owns lands principally in three areas: southern Chile, southern Argentina, and north-eastern Argentina. His total land holdings are estimated to be around 800.000 hectares, making him one of the top private land owners in the world. His land is primarily dedicated to conservation, consisting of mountain ridges, swamps, rainforests, pastures, rivers, and wide steppes.

Pumalin Park

In 1991 Douglas Tompkins bought a large, semi-abandoned plot of land in the Reñihué Valley of the Chilean province of Palena. The idea was to preserve an almost intact primary forest that was located in a smooth valley of easy access for logging. This property had an area of approximately 7500 hectares. Eventually, other properties in the surrounding areas were acquired.  For settlers who were trying to make a living off marginal areas and were anxious to sell, properties with better conditions for agriculture and cattle farming were purchased, and they were also provided with sufficient funds to settle down in their new homes and start up a good farming establishment. Most of the small plots bought off settlers (which represent 0.7% of the area of Pumalin) were very marginal, almost always completely inappropriate even for light sheep farming.  CLT did its best to benefit the local people and the land through these purchases for conservation.

The project evolved through the 90s and by 2002 it had grown to 298,800 hectares, a size similar to that of Yosemite National Park in California, becoming Chile?s 7th largest national park. On August 19th 2005 these lands were declared ?Sanctuary for Nature?, a special designation by the Chilean State that implies further protection, where no industrial activity is allowed.

The early months of 1994 saw the beginning of a political opposition to the project, an opposition that still continues today and will persist in the future, though to a lesser degree. The main reasons for this opposition are due to the project?s unusual nature, considering that Chile had not previously witnessed this sort of philanthropy towards natural lands. Most developers, and in particular politicians eager to populate the most inhospitable areas of Chile, such as the fjords, have been particularly hostile towards this project of conservation and sustainable ecotourism.

Throughout the 15 years of existence of Pumalin Park it has always functioned in the same way as any National Park, but under a private initiative. Its infrastructure is typical to every national park worldwide: footpaths, bridges, information centres, camping grounds, picnic areas, handicrafts and book shops, lodges, cafés, access routes, infrastructure for agro-tourism, adequate signs and housing for employees.

The project is divided into natural lands (around 98% of the entire area) and seven small plots designated for agriculture and cattle, located in different watersheds or catchments. These small plots serve as ranger posts, and in doing so help provide the park with human presence in the strategic entry to every valley in order to assist visitors as well as preventing vandalism (which is mostly in the form of logging) and other existing problems such as the spread of forest fires caused by careless neighbours.

Even though Chile?s faunal diversity index is relatively low compared to most South American countries, it is rich in flora, especially so when it comes to endemic species and subspecies which can only be found in Chile. The evergreen broadleaved forest, known in Chie as the Valdivian Rainforest, includes thousands of plant species. It represents actual rainforest where the annual rainfall is of ca. 6000mm. The old, original forests reach all the way to the ocean, which is something that is becoming increasingly rare worldwide. These exuberant forests that are found on escarped slopes and that reach the snowline represent a beautiful natural landscape, adding aesthetic value to the biological importance of their conservation.

Pumalin has been in development for fifteen years and a few more will be needed to complete the infrastructure for public access and the restoration and reforestation of the small plots located on the perimeter of the park. The valley deep inside the park, many of which have never been explored by man, still evolve as they have done for millennia, nature continues untouched, something seemingly impossible in this world where the goal appears to be the humanization of every corner. With a little bit of luck, future generations will realize the importance of protecting these natural areas of high biodiversity, and will be grateful that they were left untouched.

Source : www.theconservationlandtrust.org