It Ain't Easy Being Patagonia's Biggest Landowner

Today's Sunday NY Times included a story about a rich man who has become Chile's largest landowner. Douglas Tompkins, founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing companies, first fell in love with Chile as a backpacking teenager. Now he has turned his land, about the size of Rhode Island, into nature sanctuaries, and this hasn't made the natives particularly happy. The Chilean government has blocked some of his aquisitions, choosing to sell a 125-acre tract to a power company instead of to the Americano.

"Some have suggested that he wants to turn Patagonia into a nuclear dumping ground, other speculate that he wants to seize control of water supplies in a world with a growing thirst, and there have even been accusations that Tompkins, a gray-haired WASP, has aquired the land as a site for a new Jewish state. 'He is little appreciated, understood or welcomed in Chile today, said Carlos Weber, an national park official, 'but I predict that 30 years from now, no one will be against him.'