How one U.S. conservationist’s work is helping to preserve Chile’s wilderness
BRUNSWICK PENINSULA, Chile — The rugged shores and icy forests at the tip of the Brunswick Peninsula in southern Chile are soon to be the cornerstone in a long route of national parks and mountain ranges that extends down through Patagonia.
In March this year, 315,000 acres around Cape Froward, the southernmost point of the South American continent, will become Chile’s 47th national park.
The initiative is in large part thanks to the efforts of U.S. conservationist and philanthropist Kristine Tompkins, and will become the latest step in her mission to protect one of the last truly wild places on Earth.
“When you come to places like this, you start to feel very small, and you realize how we’re just a tiny part of all life on our planet,” Tompkins says in a sheltered hollow below the towering Cross of the Seas.
The giant metal cross was erected at the southernmost point on the continent in 1987 to mark the visit of Pope John Paul II to Chile. The howling wind sings as it whips through the creaking structure.
The hike up to the cross is difficult and swampy, with Tompkins and her team stepping between tufts of grass, while the glassy water along the shoreline laps quietly at the stony beach below.
“We’ve had a lot of success as a species, but we have done a hell of a lot of damage too and the pace is picking up,” Tompkins says.
“The more we understand about who and where we are on this Earth, and what our role is, the better shot all life has of being in one piece in 100 or 200 years’ time.”
Protecting places like Cape Froward are key to her vision.
Nearly 20% of the area is peatland, which absorbs carbon and filters groundwater. Pristine native forests reach right down to the shores, where green frills on the surface are the only hint of the sprawling kelp forests beneath the tides.
In the distance across the Strait of Magellan, the glaciers that cap the Darwin Range glint in the afternoon sun.
Kristine Tompkins came to Chile for the first time in early 1993 with her husband Douglas Tompkins, who co-founded the North Face and Esprit clothing companies. He died in a kayaking accident in 2015.
Through Rewilding Chile and Rewilding Argentina, as well as their parent organization Tompkins Conservation, they have helped create 15 national parks, including two marine parks between the two countries — protecting 14.8 million acres of land and 30 million acres of ocean.
And Kristine Tompkins herself has the remarkable ability to make those around her feel like they have been walking alongside throughout her journey. Her curiosity is boundless, be it kneeling to peer through portholes streaked with water as the boat out to the peninsula sways through the waves, or searching for heart-shaped rocks on the beach for her collection.
Cape Froward will be the 16th national park Tompkins Conservation has helped create.
“We started off by acquiring land as and when it came onto the market,” says Marcela Quiroz, Rewilding Chile’s director of strategic partnerships, in the dappled shade of a coihue forest.
“The first major purchase we made was nearly 94,000 hectares in 2021 which we bought from a local family,” she says, which is about 363 square miles or more than 232,000 acres. “We want to keep working to complete this puzzle.”
A local landowning family was looking to sell part of their estate, and even posted the property listing in The New York Times. But when Tompkins Conservation called, they lowered their price, enthused by the idea that the area would be protected.
Two months later, the organization bought up a second piece of land, this time 84,000 acres, and then in March 2024, the Chilean government signed an agreement to create the park and annex two chunks of state-owned land at each end.
“For us, national parks are a large-scale conservation strategy,” explains Quiroz. “But this does not mean that we are freezing the local economy, the idea is to be able to develop alternative economic activities in harmony with biodiversity.”
Chile’s national forestry commission, which will eventually take over the management of the park, is completing its administrative processes. An Indigenous consultation will follow, before the park opens later this year.
“This whole corridor makes up 8 million hectares of protected land,” Quiroz says proudly — almost 20 million acres.
Beyond their work creating parks and conservation areas, Rewilding Chile and Rewilding Argentina have reintroduced species that have been driven to local or national extinction, including jaguars, red-and-green macaws, giant river otters and Darwin’s rheas.
There is even a population of the critically endangered huemul deer at Cape Froward, although little is known about it. A network of camera traps and sound recording devices has been set up to assess their soundscape and movement.
“In 100 years I think we’re going to look back and be proud of what Douglas and Kristine have done, and they will be big characters in Chilean history,” says Carolina Morgado, executive director of Rewilding Chile. “I feel proud that they have chosen Chile to focus their conservation efforts.”
National parks are the highest level of conservation status in Chile. The country’s first park was created in 1926, and today the national forestry commission oversees 109 protected areas.
Every president since 1926 has created at least one national park, and Cape Froward will be President Gabriel Boric’s chance to protect a swath of his home region, Magallanes.
Evidence of the long human history of this windswept coastline of Cape Froward, and there are occasionally scars on the oldest trees where the Kawésqar people stripped away the bark to line their canoes. At Bahía del Águila are the remains of a 19th-century whaling station.
And in the next bay is one of eight lighthouses built along this coastline by Scottish architect George Slight to guide ships through the perilous Strait of Magellan. It will be turned into a museum and visitor center to form the entry point to the new national park.
For now, the skeleton of a female humpback whale is laid out on the floor of the lighthouse, and three canoes are propped up in one wing of the old building.
Tompkins says she is proud to be handing over to the next generation of conservationists.
“It feels like a tremendous responsibility,” says Morgado. “This goes way beyond creating national parks. It’s about installing a vision about how we, as citizens, can get involved in protecting the land and its biodiversity.
“And that, to me at least, is important.”
Transcript:
SCOTT SIMON: Chile is posed to gain its 47th national park early next year when the southernmost tip at the South American continent is granted protected status. This initiative is in large part due to the efforts of U.S. conservationist Kristine Tompkins and her organization. John Bartlett has been hiking through the wilderness with Kristine Tompkins and her team.
(SOUNDBITE OF ICE CRACKING)
JOHN BARTLETT: At the end of the world, Patagonia’s peaks and glaciers fracture into icy fiords, channels and inlets. Beyond the glaciers and wild woodlands, Cape Froward in Chile is the forested headland at the very tip of the Brunswick Peninsula, the southernmost point on the South American continent.
KRISTINE TOMPKINS: It’s important for people to come and see that these places still exist because a lot of people don’t even understand how much of the Earth is thriving but threatened.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: Conservationist Kristine Tompkins has driven forward the creation of the future national park at Cape Froward. In March next year, 315,000 acres of the peninsula will become a new national park, comprising carbon-storing peatlands, ancient woodland, underwater kelp forests and rugged shorelines.
TOMPKINS: (Laughter).
BARTLETT: Tompkins came to Chile for the first time in early 1993 with her husband Douglas, who founded the outdoor clothing companies North Face and Esprit. And together, they have literally changed the Patagonian landscape.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: Rewilding Chile and Rewilding Argentina – as well as their parent organization, Tompkins Conservation – have created 15 national parks, including two marine parks. This will be their 16th. Tragically, Douglas died in a kayaking accident in 2015.
TOMPKINS: When Doug died, it was quite freeing in a way – it almost killed me, but now I have no fear. So taking things on, whether it’s here in Chile or over in Argentina, seems like second nature to me now.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: We made our way out here from the city of Punta Arenas.
TOMPKINS: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: For 3 1/2 hours, we bump over waves in the cabin of a small boat.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT ENGINE)
BARTLETT: The coastline is low and rugged, and as we plow on through the swells, fishing villages and huts stop appearing from behind headlands. Slowly, the sheer, snowy faces of mountains take their place, and tree branches reach northwards like desperate fingers, combed by the lashing wind and frozen by hail.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
BARTLETT: From here, we begin our walk.
BENJAMIN CACERES: (Through interpreter) It’s a truly diverse mosaic of life from the sea to the peaks of the mountains.
BARTLETT: Benjamin Caceres is Rewilding Chile’s conservation coordinator for the region. He grew up walking the area with his father – also a marine biologist.
CACERES: (Through interpreter) Starting with the sea, the most characteristic and iconic places are the kelp forests along the whole shoreline – a really special ecosystem, which we have right from Alaska down to here.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUNNING WATER)
BARTLETT: We camp between the white-bark trunks of a coihue forest and set off along the beach the next morning, clambering over sharp rocks. Algae shaped like mermaids’ tails rise serenely with the current in the inlets, we sidestep carefully around.
JAVIERA GOMEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: A pod of dolphins leap and arc over the green plates of kelp just off the beach in front of us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPLASHING WATER)
BARTLETT: We carry on slipping over the rocks and shellfish, edge along mossy ledges. The Darwin Range rises across the Strait of Magellan in front of us on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHOPPING)
BARTLETT: While dinner is prepared, I sit down on a fallen tree trunk with Marcela Quiroz, Rewilding Chile’s director of strategic partnerships.
MARCELA QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: She explains where we are and where we’ve been as we squint down at a map in the fading light, tracing the islets of Patagonia, which carry the unfamiliar names of explorers and mariners.
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Marcela explains that nearly 20% of the area to be protected is peatland, which absorbs carbon and filters water.
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Some of the ancient forests reach right up to the shoreline where we look out to sea imagining the galleons of Ferdinand Magellan and the other great explorers cutting through the waves, silhouetted against the setting sun.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAMPFIRE CRACKLING)
BARTLETT: Chile’s first national park was created in 1926. And today, the National Forestry Commission oversees 109 protected areas.
(CROSSTALK)
BARTLETT: Every president since then has created at least one national park. And Cape Froward will be President Gabriel Boric’s chance to protect a swathe of his home region, Magallanes.
QUIROZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “If you look,” Quiroz says as she jabs the map excitedly with a forefinger, “the Brunswick Peninsula where we are sat could be annexed into a great corridor of protected areas.”
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
BARTLETT: The next day, we walk up and over the peatlands through gnarled thickets of dwarf cypress trees – their tiny, green leaves glowing against the storm clouds as we squelch and suck our feet in and out of the mud. The University of Chile is currently conducting research into exactly how much carbon is held in these peatlands.
(SOUNDBITE OF CORMORANT CALL)
BARTLETT: The area was once used for logging, with the coveted coihue timber taken away to build the city of Punta Arenas, and even made it as far as the Falkland Islands in Buenos Aires.
After trudging through the peatlands, we’ve just stepped down out of an ancient forest into this wide-open bay where the waves are lapping at the shore and algae are floating on the surface. And right where we left the forest, there’s a tiny archaeological site – a pile of shells and animal bones left behind by the indigenous Kawesqar people.
CACERES: (Through interpreter) What we have here is a midden – an archaeological site, which is evidence of more than 6,000 years of indigenous Kawesqar activity in the area.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHELLS CRUNCHING)
BARTLETT: Caceres points to buried piles of shellfish and small bones left behind at Kawesqar campsites. Sometimes, you’ll even see penguin or dolphin bones among the debris. Efforts will be made to divert the pods in the new national park away from these extremely delicate archaeological sites.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
BARTLETT: In some places, there are even the remains of fish traps the Kawesqar set up. These are rings of stone, which are then filled with sea life at high tide, trapping the fish and shells when the waves fall away.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS SINGING)
BARTLETT: Four days after we were dropped off at the tip of the Americas, where the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic oceans meet, we’ve made it here to San Isidro lighthouse, which is going to form the entry point for the new national park.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS SINGING)
BARTLETT: Just before the lighthouse at Bahia del Aguila are the remains of a 19th-century whaling station, evidence of the long human history on this windswept coastline.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAMMERING)
BARTLETT: The lighthouse will be turned into a museum by Caceres, his brother and a group of artists and scientists.
CACERES: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: He explains that this is one of eight lighthouses built along this coastline by Scottish architect George Slight to guide ships through the perilous Strait of Magellan. Nowadays, they are solar-powered and operated remotely by the Chilean navy.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES)
TOMPKINS: I don’t look back on what we’ve done so much over the last 30 years. What’s important to me is what are we putting out in front of ourselves, learning from what we’ve done and then go like hell and keep going.
BARTLETT: Kristine Tompkins says that this 16th national park her organization has helped create has been one of the most challenging but also one of the most important.
TOMPKINS: You know, when I die, all of this is going to keep going. There’ll be a 19th and a 20th and a 21st. And that’s what matters to me.
BARTLETT: For NPR News, I’m John Bartlett at San Isidro lighthouse, Chile.
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