Kris Tompkins

Born in southern California, Kristine McDivitt spent most of her childhood on her great-grandfather’s ranch, which was formative in fostering her connection to the natural world. She spent some early years in Venezuela, where her father worked for an oil company.[7] At age 15, she met and befriended rock climbing legend and equipment manufacturer Yvon Chouinard; he gave her a summer job working for Chouinard Equipment. Kris attended college at the College of Idaho in Caldwell,[8] where she ski-raced competitively.

Beginning in 1973, Kris returned to California and worked for her friends from her teenage years, Yvon and Malinda Chouinard, eventually helping to build Patagonia, Inc. She helped Yvon Chouinard turn his fledgling piton business into Patagonia, Inc.[9] Kris became the company’s first CEO and collaborated with the Chouinards to build Patagonia, Inc into a renowned “anti-corporation” and a leader in the outdoor apparel industry. In 1980, Patagonia started to donate 10 percent of their profits to environmental organizations such as Earth First! In 1984, the company formed the "One Percent for the Planet Club", which donates either 1% of sales or 10% of profits—whichever is greater—to environmental causes.[1]

In 1993, Kris retired from Patagonia, Inc, married Doug Tompkins (founder of The North Face and co-founder of Esprit), and the couple left their careers as business leaders of iconic American brands to devote their funds, time, and passion to mitigating the climate and extinction crises. The Tompkins decided to focus their efforts on national parks as they represent the “gold standard” of conservation—offering a unique set of ecological, cultural, and economic benefits, while also guaranteeing long-term conservation. Their conservation work has been carried out through a suite of nonprofits, including, Conservation Land Trust and Conservacion Patagonica, all of which have now consolidated under Tompkins Conservation. Tompkins Conservation now works to rewild the Southern Cone, working closely with strategic allies and offspring organizations - Rewilding Chile and Rewilding Argentina.

In 1991, Doug Tompkins began acquiring private land for conservation purposes in Chile’s Los Lagos Region. Over the years, Doug and Kris Tompkins and their team assembled the world’s largest private nature reserve and managed it as a public-access park in the threatened Valdivian temperate rainforest. Pumalín Park received official nature sanctuary status in 2005 and was designated a national park in 2018, prompted by Tompkins Conservation’s donation of almost 725,000 acres for the new, roughly 1-million-acre park, Pumalin Douglas Tompkins National Park, named in honor of its founder.[10][11][12]

The Tompkins' conservation efforts expanded to Argentina, starting with the Iberá Wetlands of the Corrientes province. In the wetland ecosystem, they have launched projects to reintroduce extirpated species, such as the giant anteater, jaguar, red-and-green macaw, and giant river otter.[13][14] The rewilding work in Ibera, as well as many other projects in the country, is now carried out by Rewilding Argentina, the team assembled by Kris and Doug, led by Sofia Heinonen.

After years of collaborating with governments, local organizations, scientists, philanthropists, and communities, in January 2018 Kris, on behalf of Tompkins Conservation, and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed decrees to create five new national parks in Chile and expand three others, adding a total of more than 10 million acres of new national parklands to Chile. For scale, that is more than three times the size of Yosemite and Yellowstone combined, or approximately the size of Switzerland. With one million acres of land from Tompkins Conservation and an additional 9 million acres of federal land from Chile, this has been billed as the largest donation of land from a private entity to a country in history.[15][16]

As the president of Tompkins Conservation, Kristine Tompkins currently oversees a multitude of projects in Chile and Argentina working toward creating parklands, marine conservation areas and fighting the extinction crisis via rewilding, the process of protecting and restoring land and waters, wildlife, and natural systems.

Tompkins serves in various positions of global leadership in conservation, including as Chair of National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places campaign. She was the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. In 2018 she was named the United Nations’ Global Patron for Protected Areas. Her 2020 TED Talk, entitled Make the World Wild Again, discusses the critical role we all have to play to heal the planet.

Conservación Patagónica (CP) was founded by Kris Tompkins in 2000 as an NGO focused on creating new national parks in Patagonia that protect and restore wildlands, biodiversity, and communities. CP's first project was the establishment of Monte Leon National Park, Argentina’s first coastal national park. In 2001, CP purchased Estancia Monte León, one of the oldest sheep ranches in Argentine Patagonia, located on the southern Atlantic shoreline a few hundred miles north of the Strait of Magellan. Monte León had long been one of the priorities for Argentine National Parks because of its richness and diversity of species, including Magellanic penguins, sea lions, elephant seals, leopard seals, and several migratory seabirds.[17] CP purchased this 155,000-acre (63,000 ha) estancia, crafted a master plan for its transition to a national park and, in 2002, donated the property to the Argentine National Parks Administration, creating the Monte León National Park, the first coastal national park in Argentina.[18]

In 2003, CP had the opportunity to purchase Estancia Valle Chacabuco, a historic sheep ranch in Chile's Aysén Region. The Chilean National Parks had made this ranch their number-one conservation priority for more than 35 years because it sits between two existing National Reserves, namely Jeinimeni and Tamango, together 460,000 acres (190,000 ha). This area is prime habitat for the endangered huemul deer, one of Chile's national animals. After developing a public-access infrastructure system, including a trail system, visitor center, campgrounds, lodging, and a restaurant, CP donated Patagonia Park to the Chilean park service. Along with the two adjoining National Reserves, this became the Patagonia National Park, a flagship park for Latin America. Stretching between two of the country's largest lakes, Lago General Carrera and Lago Cochrane, the park contains an impressive diversity of landscapes: arid Patagonian steppe, Southern Beech forests, wetlands, high peaks, alpine lakes, and streams. As the president of CP, Tompkins was heavily involved in every aspect of this project, from landscape restoration to infrastructure construction.[19] Tompkins and her team are some of the few throughout the world currently practicing this movement.[20]

• Wild Life – 2023 film by Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin