Chile, U.S. Millionaire Sign Truce on Eco-Park
7/7/97
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Headline: Chile, U.S. Millionaire Sign Truce on Eco-Park
Source: Reuters
Date: 7/7/97
Byline: Roger Atwood
Copyright 1997 by Reuters
SANTIAGO (Reuter) - The Chilean government, in a major
reversal, threw its weight Monday behind U.S. millionaire
ecologist Douglas Tompkins' plans to create a giant nature
preserve on his land in southern Chile.
Tompkins and Chilean Government Minister Juan Villarzu
signed an agreement by which the California clothing magnate,
who has bought an area of forest larger than Rhode Island, will
donate the land to an environmental foundation led by his
supporters.
He will also allow roads and power transmission wires to be
built over the land -- a spectacular expanse of mountains,
fjords and glaciers -- if ``there is a public interest at
stake,'' the agreement said.
In exchange, President Eduardo Frei's government will back
the project against its many foes, including the powerful
military and the big business community, who accuse Tompkins of
wanting to stop Chile's economic development.
``This is no mere gentlemen's agreement,'' Villarzu said
after the signing. ``This is an agreement that will allow a
project of great value to become a reality.''
``Mr Tompkins has bought these lands and he has every right
to do so. He has come to Chile like any other foreign investor
and since that's the case, the government will not stand in his
way,'' Villarzu told a news conference in Chile's Moneda
presidential palace.
Villarzu said reports that Tompkins had pressured local
settlers to sell to him were ``groundless.''
Tompkins, multi-millionaire founder of the Esprit clothing
chain, said he has spent about $16 million in buying up vast
tracts of rare temperate rain forest on the southern Chilean
coast.
Seeing himself as an eco-philanthropist, Tompkins has said
he wants to turn the land over to a private Chilean foundation
on the condition it be opened to the public for tourism. He and
his wife live in a simple wooden house in one corner of the
park, amid organic gardens.
But the project, begun in the early 1990s with help from
Chilean environmental groups, ran into opposition from the
military who considered him a threat to national security
because his land stretches from the coast to the Argentine
border -- cutting Chile in two.
Conservative business leaders accused him of bankrolling
Chile's environmental movement and called on the government to
expel him. He also met hostility from much of the country's
rightist news media, with one television station implying he was
a CIA spy.
Villarzu, Frei's top political adviser, said the government
had weighed all the concerns and that ``all Chileans can rest
easy with the agreement.''
Tompkins said he was happy with the agreement because it
will allow him to turn nearly all his land into a ``nature
sanctuary,'' an official status which allows very limited
development but not total protection.
``This agreement is really just putting on paper some
things that are obvious. It dispels some of the unwarranted
attacks,'' he said. ``And it gives us the help of the
government, which we need because we can't have the government
against us.''
In the agreement's key paragraph, the government says it
''has studied the project ... and declares its willingness to
collaborate in its completion.''
The agreement calls for Tompkins to turn the land over to a
seven-member foundation, of which his Parque Pumalin Foundation
will name four, with the other three divided between academics
and a Roman Catholic bishop. Tompkins will also desist from
buying more large tracts of land, which he has said he is not
interested in doing anyway.
``I've had enough headaches with this already,'' he said.