Buy land to save the planet

An American millionaire is trying to save the earth by buying parts of it. To date, he has owned a strip of Chile and Argentina, as big as Belgium.

First, Douglas Tompkins - founder of clothing North Face and Esprit - bought a large piece of pasture in southern Chile, and now he hopes to save the northeast swamp of neighboring Argentina.

Pumalin Park in southern Chile, owned by American businessman Douglas Tompkins.(Photo: AP)

He has targeted more than 200,000 hectares of Esteros del Ibera, a vast swamp of Argentina, where wildlife is abundant. The total land area owned by Tompkins now is more than 400,000 hectares in both Chile and Argentina, larger than Belgium.

Tompkins said that agricultural mechanization is slowly eating away from Argentina's degraded marshes and grasslands, and consequently the fertile surface soil disappears."Everywhere I go across Argentina, I see excessive land abuse . exactly like it was in the United States 20 or 30 years ago , " he said.

Tompkins hopes to do something in this country just like he did in Chile - creating vast tracts of land without the presence of agriculture or industry, and one day will return them to the government. in the form of nature conservation areas.

Tompkins, 64, became a hero in the eyes of environmentalists. But others criticized his plan as an external challenge to their national assets.

T. An