Pumalin Douglas Tompkins

Begun in 1991 when the American businessman Douglas Tompkins started buying up large tracts of Chilean Patagonia, gradually and partly in secret, the project drew years of suspicion and conspiracy theories in the Chilean press and politics about supposed plans to split the country in two or to install covert foreign bases — until the formal gift of the park to the Chilean state in 2018, three years after Tompkins's death, put those doubts to rest for good and completed the largest private conservation project ever turned into a public park in South American history.