Let's make the world wild again

Earth, humanity and nature are inextricably interconnected. To restore us all back to health, we need to "rewild" the world, says environmental activist Kristine Tompkins. Tracing her life from Patagonia CEO to passionate conservationist, she shares how she has helped to establish national parks across millions of acres of land (and sea) in South America -- and discusses the critical role we all have to play to heal the planet. "We have a common destiny," she says. "We can flourish or we can suffer, but we're going to be doing it together."

My siblings and I grew up
on our great-grandfather's farm

in California.

It was a landscape
of our family and our home.

When it was clear
that nobody in our generation

wanted to take on
the heavy burden of ranching,

the ranch was sold to a neighbor.

The anchor of our lives was cut,

and we felt adrift
in the absence of that land.

For the first time, I came to understand

that something valuable
can be best understood

not by its presence,

but by its absence.

It was impossible to know then

just how powerful the absence
of those things we love

would have an impact far into my future.

For 23 years, my working life
was with Yvon Chouinard.

I started when he was designing
and manufacturing

technical rock and ice climbing equipment

in a tin shed near
the railroad tracks in Ventura.

And when Yvon decided
to start making clothes for climbers

and call this business Patagonia,

I became one of the first six employees,

later becoming CEO

and helping build a company

where creating the best products
and doing good by the world

was more than just a tagline.

Doug Tompkins, who would become
my husband years later,

was an old friend and climbing
companion of Yvon's

and also an entrepreneur.

He cofounded The North Face
and Esprit company.

All three of these businesses

were created by people
who had grown up through the '60s,

shaped by the civil rights, antiwar,
feminist and peace movements.

And those values
were picked up in those years

and carried throughout
the values of these companies.

By the end of the 1980s,

Doug decided to leave business altogether

and commit the last third of his life
to what he called

"paying his rent
for living on the planet."

At nearly the same time, when I hit 40,

I was ready to do something
completely new with my life.

The day after retiring
from the Patagonia company,

I flew 6,000 miles to Patagonia the place

and joined Doug as he started
what was the first conservation project

of that third of his life.

There we were, refugees
from the corporate world,

holed up in a cabin on the coast
in southern Chile,

surrounded by primaeval rainforest

where alerce trees
can live for thousands of years.

We were in the middle
of a great wilderness

that forms one of the only two gaps
in the Pan-American highway,

between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Cape Horn.

A radical change to our daily lives

spurred on as we had begun to recognize

how beauty and diversity
were being destroyed

pretty much everywhere.

The last wild protected places on earth

were still wild

mostly because the relentless
front lines of development

simply hadn't arrived there yet.

Doug and I were in one
of the most remote parts on earth,

and still around the edges
of Pumalín Park,

our first conservation effort,

industrial aquaculture
was growing like a malignancy.

Before too long, other threats
arrived to the Patagonia region.

Gold mining, dam projects
on pristine rivers

and other growing conflicts.

The vibration of stampeding
economic growth worldwide

could be heard even in the highest
latitudes of the Southern Cone.

I know that progress is viewed,
generally, in very positive terms,

as some sort of hopeful evolution.

But from where we sat,

we saw the dark side of industrial growth.

And when industrial worldviews
are applied to natural systems

that support all life,

we begin to treat the Earth

as a factory that produces all the things
that we think we need.

As we're all painfully aware,

the consequences of that worldview
are destructive to human welfare,

our climate systems and to wildlife.

Doug called it the price of progress.

That's how we saw things,

and we wanted to be a part
of the resistance,

pushing up against all of those trends.

The idea of buying private land
and then donating it

to create national parks

isn't really new.

Anyone who has ever enjoyed the views
of Teton National Park in Wyoming

or camped in Acadia National Park in Maine

has benefited from this big idea.

Through our family foundation,

we began to acquire wildlife habitat
in Chile and Argentina.

Being believers in conservation biology,

we were going for big, wild and connected.

Areas that were pristine, in some cases,

and others that would need time to heal,

that needed to be rewild.

Eventually, we bought
more than two million acres

from willing sellers,

assembling them into privately
managed protected areas,

while building park infrastructure
as camp grounds and trails

for future use by the general public.

All were welcome.

Our goal was to donate all of this land
in the form of new national parks.

You might describe this
as a kind of capitalist jujitsu move.

We deployed private wealth
from our business lives

and deployed it to protect nature

from being devoured by the hand
of the global economy.

It sounded good,

but in the early '90s in Chile,

where wildlands philanthropy,
which is what we called it,

was completely unknown,

we faced tremendous suspicion,

and from many quarters,
downright hostility.

Over time, largely by doing
what we said we were doing,

we began to win people over.

Over the last 27 years,

we've permanently protected
nearly 15 million acres

of temperate rainforest,

Patagonian step grasslands,

coastal areas,

freshwater wetlands,

and created 13 new national parks.

All comprised of our land donations

and federal lands
adjoining those territories.

After Doug's death
following a kayaking accident

four years ago,

the power of absence hit home again.

But we at Tompkins Conservation
leaned in to our loss

and accelerated our efforts.

Among them, in 2018,

creating new marine national parks
covering roughly 25 million acres

in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

No commercial fishing
or extraction of any kind.

In 2019, we finalized
the largest private land gift in history,

when our last million acres
of conservation land in Chile

passed to the government.

A public-private partnership

that created five new national parks
and expanded three others.

This ended up being
an area larger than Switzerland.

All of our projects
are the results of partnerships.

First and foremost with the governments
of Chile and Argentina.

And this requires leadership

who understands the value of protecting
the jewels of their countries,

not just for today,
but long into the future.

Partnerships with like-minded
conservation philanthropists as well

played a role in everything we've done.

Fifteen years ago,

we asked ourselves,

"Beyond protecting landscape,

what do we really have to do
to create fully functioning ecosystems?"

And we began to ask ourselves,
wherever we were working,

who's missing,

what species had disappeared

or whose numbers were low and fragile.

We also had to ask,

"How do we eliminate the very reason

that these species went extinct
in the first place?"

What seems so obvious now

was a complete thunderbolt for us.

And it changed the nature
of everything we do,

completely.

Unless all the members of the community
are present and flourishing,

it's impossible for us to leave behind
fully functioning ecosystems.

Since then, we've successfully
reintroduced several native species

to the Iberá Wetlands:

giant anteaters,

pampas deer,

peccaries

and finally, one of the most difficult,
the green-winged macaws,

who've gone missing
for over 100 years in that ecosystem.

And today, they're back,
flying free, dispensing seeds,

playing out their lives as they should be.

The capstone of these efforts in Iberá

is to return the apex carnivores
to their rightful place.

Jaguars on the land,
giant otters in the water.

Several years of trial and error
produced young cubs

who will be released

for the first time in over half a century

into Iberá wetlands,

and now, the 1.7-million-acre Iberá Park
will provide enough space

for recovering jaguar populations
with low risk of conflict

with neighboring ranchers.

Our rewilding projects in Chile

are gaining ground on low numbers
of several key species

in the Patagonia region.

The huemul deer
that is truly nearly extinct,

the lesser rheas

and building the puma
and fox populations back up.

You know, the power
of the absent can't help us

if it just leads to nostalgia or despair.

To the contrary,

it's only useful if it motivates us

toward working to bring back
what's gone missing.

Of course, the first step in rewilding

is to be able to imagine
that it's possible in the first place.

That wildlife abundance
recorded in journals

aren't just stories
from some old dusty books.

Can you imagine that?

Do you believe the world
could be more beautiful,

more equitable?

I do.

Because I've seen it.

Here's an example.

When we purchased
one of the largest ranches

in Chile and Patagonia, in 2004,

it looked like this.

For a century, this land
had been overgrazed by livestock,

like most grasslands around the world.

Soil erosion was rampant,

hundreds of miles of fencing

kept wildlife and its flow corralled.

And that was with the little
wildlife that was left.

The local mountain lions and foxes
had been persecuted for decades,

leaving their numbers very low.

Today, those lands are the 763,000-acre
Patagonian National Park,

and it looks like this.

And Arcelio, the former gaucho,

whose job was to first find and kill
mountain lions in the years past,

today is the head tracker
for the park's wildlife team,

and his story captures the imagination
of people around the world.

What is possible.

I share these thoughts and images with you
not for self-congratulations,

but to make a simple point

and propose an urgent challenge.

If the question is survival,

survival of life's diversity
and human dignity

and healthy human communities,

then the answer must include
rewilding the Earth.

As much and as quickly as possible.

Everyone has a role to play in this,

but especially those of us with privilege,

with political power,

wealth,

where, let's face it,
for better, for worse,

that's where the chess game
of our future is played out.

And this gets to the core of the question.

Are we prepared to do what it takes
to change the end of this story?

The changes the world has made
in the past few months

to stop the spread of COVID-19

are so promising to me,

because it shows we can join forces
under desperate circumstances.

What we're going through now
could be a precursor

to the broader potential damage
as a result of the climate crisis.

But without warning,

globally, we're learning to work together
in ways we could never have imagined.

Having watched young people
from around the world

rising up and going out into the streets

to remind us of our culpability
and chastising us for our inaction

are the ones who really inspire me.

I know, you've heard all of this before.

But if there was ever a moment
to awaken to the reality

that everything is connected
to everything else,

it's right now.

Every human life
is affected by the actions

of every other human life
around the globe.

And the fate of humanity
is tied to the health of the planet.

We have a common destiny.

We can flourish

or we can suffer ...

But we're going to be doing it together.

So here's the truth.

We're so far past the point
when individual action is an elective.

In my opinion, it's a moral imperative

that every single one of us

steps up to reimagine
our place in the circle of life.

Not in the center,
but as part of the whole.

We need to remember

that what we do
reflects who we choose to be.

Let's create a civilization

that honors the intrinsic
value of all life.

No matter who you are,

no matter what you have to work with,

get out of bed every single morning,

and do something that has nothing
to do with yourself,

but rather having everything to do
with those things you love.

With those things you know to be true.

Be someone who imagines human progress

to be something that moves us
toward wholeness.

Toward health.

Toward human dignity.

And always,

and forever,

wild beauty.

Thank you.