How One Woman Protected Millions of Acres

You probably heard about the recent devastating wildfires in Ibera. A visit with Kristine Tompkins who has conserved more land there than any other single individual, calling it “capitalist jiujitsu” for the planet.

The first thing Kristine McDivitt Tompkins had to do when she arrived in Chile more than three decades ago was tear down fences. Demolishing 700 kilometers of barbed wire in the rough terrain that she and her husband bought was back-breaking work, but overcoming barriers in the minds of the locals was much harder. “We were accused of being spies!” she says with a laugh. “Of hiding radioactive waste or of training a secret army for the CIA. The rumors were crazy.” The Chilean police tapped their phones, installed a police station nearby and watched their every step.

Their suspicion was understandable. The now 71-year-old president of Tompkins Conservation and her late husband Doug Tompkins were attempting a feat of conservation never before done on such a large scale, spending more than $345 million to buy large swaths of land in Chile and Argentina, restore the grasslands, the forests, and the waterways — and then give them back to the people.

In 2018 and 2019, Kris Tompkins finished this chapter of her life’s work by handing over nearly one million hectares to the Chilean government. This was added to the…