This guy smoked waaaay too much dope back in the 60's
I'm not crazy about environmentalists, but at least this guy is putting his money where his mouth is and buying land instead of telling someone else that they can't use their land.
The guy may be a fruit, but at least he's a reasonable fruit - he's not lobbying a government to take someone else's land, he's purchasing it all on his own. If he wants to make it a nature preserve, so be it.
Actually I don't have a problem with the guy using his own money to do something like that. Obviously the people down there have other ideas.
Why do they worry. He will be dead soon enough.
He got caught fooling around on his wife Suzie Tomkins, who many think was the brains and design talent behind Esprit. They had an acrimonious divorce and Suzie was left with the company that is much downsized these days.
That's part of the details that I heard. I don't know the whole story, but Doug Tomkins is no saint.
Guy needs to get himself an Argentine partner, someone to put a local face on the project. Start a bottling factory outside of the preserve with an Argentine partner, hire a bunch of locals, and start exporting bottled water from the aquifer. That should settle the government down.
"preserve some of Argentina's last frontier lands from human encroachment by buying them and turning them into ecological reserves..."
Private property. Don't see anything wrong with that.
Personally, I think it'd be great if he did it here.
"new-age imperialist"
These people are pretty smart. One whiff and they see it for what it really is.
More power to the guy for putting his money where his mouth is though. Does'nt sound like the impoverished down there will appreciate it and that makes for a risky investment.
Is anyone buying up land in Greenland yet?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
A good lefty is being attacked by international lefties - this is rich.
A greenie hippie in cahoots with the U.S. military to overthrow Paraguay and prepare for an invasion of Argentina. What will they think of next.
Sure it is not Robert Redford. He owns how many millions of acres that are off limits for ever. What is the name of the group that advertizes that you can leave your property in thier special trust so no development or hunting will ever occur on it. Only tree hungging and bird watching and hippie orgies.
Hi everybody, I´m Luciana, from Mar del Plata, Argentina. First I want to ask sorry for my english. I know that is an old post but I read your comments, and respectfully, I must say the article doesn´t show the truth. Part of the lands that Tompkins bought were home to a group of natives, a tribe that has lived there before Argentina even existed as a country. That´s why these lands were not on sale. Thanks to the corruption of some politicians, the purchase was handled without the consent of the natives. After that, in the middle of the night, the natives were taken from their homes by armed men. This only was shown one or two times for the TV, and reporters were threatened.
A lot of foreigns have bought lands saying that is to preserve nature, but then built cabins, and surround the lakes to private use. I lived in the Patagonia a year, and its really sad come back and see lakes surrounded by fences. Woods and lakes used to be public places for all, argentines or not. In the north even had kill people who refuse to leave the lands. And here is well known, the case of a foreign who bought all lands around a town and dont let the people pass trougth to come in o or out the town. It is not only fault of them, us too for dont do anything as a nation.
In the case of Tompkins what people in here believes is that the first donation was a cover, to keep buying lands with other motives. ¿And why USA is building militar bases in all the estrategic points in Latin America, like Guarani aquifer?
I´m concerned with ecollogy, so if people who buy lands here do it legally and do what they promise, We wouldn´t mind where are they from. But we see what it really happens day by day, so we cant be happy about this.