A former Patagonia CEO just locked millions of hectares of Argentine wilderness into protection—for at least 99 years

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the former CEO of outdoor brand Patagonia and widow of conservationist Doug Tompkins, has formally handed over vast tracts of privately acquired conservation land in Argentina to the state under a landmark deal that binds the government to keep the areas protected for a minimum of 99 years. The agreement, finalized through Tompkins Conservation and its local partner Rewilding Argentina, created or significantly enlarged six national parks across the country’s most ecologically sensitive regions, cementing one of the largest private-to-public land transfers in Latin American history.

The deal: land, law and a 99-year clause

At the heart of the arrangement is a legal clause that requires the Argentine state to maintain the donated lands as protected areas for at least 99 years, preventing future governments from downgrading, selling off or re-zoning the territory for extractive uses such as mining, logging or large-scale agriculture. This long-term safeguard was a non-negotiable condition for Tompkins, who spent nearly three decades with her late husband buying up degraded ranches and estates at the southern tip of South America with the explicit goal of restoring ecosystems and returning them to the public as national parks.

The lands in question total hundreds of thousands of hectares and span multiple biomes, from the wetlands of the Iberá in Corrientes to the steppe and Andean foothills of Patagonia. By transferring title to the state while locking in the 99-year protection clause, the Tompkins network has effectively turned private conservation investments into permanent public assets, while retaining a legal lever to hold the government accountable if protections are  weakened.

Six national parks created or enlarged

According to reporting on the deal, the transaction either established new national parks or substantially expanded existing ones, bringing the total to six protected areas that now form a contiguous or near-contiguous network across key wildlife corridors. While official Argentine government communications have not yet published a full technical breakdown, conservation sources and prior Tompkins projects point to several likely candidates:

• Parque Nacional Iberá (Corrientes): Already one of Argentina’s flagship rewilding sites, Iberá has grown from an initial 150,000-hectare donation in 2015 to a much larger complex that now includes restored wetlands, grasslands and forest patches. The latest transfer is understood to have consolidated additional buffer zones and connecting habitats around the core park.

• Parque Nacional Patagonia (Santa Cruz): Created in 2018 from former sheep ranches in the Chacabuco valley, this park protects Patagonian steppe, guanaco herds and puma habitat. The new deal is reported to have enlarged its boundaries to incorporate adjacent estates previously held by Tompkins Conservation.

• Parque Nacional Monte León (Santa Cruz): A coastal park protecting Magellanic penguin colonies and marine ecosystems, Monte León was among the earliest Tompkins donations in Argentina and has since been expanded with additional shoreline and inlan habitat.

• Parque Nacional El Impenetrable (Chaco): Spanning more than 128,000 hectares of dry Chaco forest, this park safeguards jaguar, giant armadillo and other threatened species. Tompkins-linked land has been added to strengthen connectivity with neighboring protected areas

• Additional parks in the Chaco and northern Patagonia regions are also understood to have been created or enlarged as part of the six-park package, though full names and boundaries await formal gazetting by Argentina’s national parks agency.

Together, these parks form part of a broader “Patagonia Azul” and “Gran Chaco” conservation vision that seeks to protect entire ecosystems rather than isolated reserves, allowing wide-ranging species to roam and migrate across a reconnected landscape.

A legacy three decades in the making

The Argentine land transfer is the culmination of a conservation odyssey that began in the mid-1990s, when Doug Tompkins—founder of The North Face and later a major Patagonia shareholder—started acquiring large, often degraded properties in Chile and Argentina with the aim of “rewilding” them. After Doug’s death in a kayaking accident in 2014, Kristine Tompkins took the helm of Tompkins Conservation, continuing and expanding the couple’s work

Over roughly 30 years, the Tompkins network has:

• Created or helped create 15 national parks across Chile and Argentina.

• Protected more than 15 million acres (around 6 million hectares) of wilderness, an area larger than many countries.

• Reintroduced or supported the recovery of more than 20 species, including jaguars, giant anteaters, Andean condors and Darwin’s rheas.

In Chile, the model has already been tested at scale: in 2018, the Tompkins family donated nearly 1 million acres that became part of Pumalín Douglas Tompkins National Park, now larger than Yosemite, and helped establish a network of new and expanded parks that added over 10 million acres of protected land. The Argentine deal mirrors that approach, but with the added innovation of the 99-year protection clause written directly into the transfer agreement.

Why the 99-year clause matters in Argentina

The inclusion of a multi-decade protection requirement is not just a legal formality; it is a direct response to Argentina’s volatile political and economic history, where conservation policies have shifted with changing administrations. In recent months, the Milei government has pushed controversial reforms to private property laws that would have weakened restrictions on land-use changes after wildfires, drawing strong opposition from environmental groups before key clauses were dropped in the Senate.

By embedding the 99-year condition in the land transfer itself, Tompkins Conservation and Rewilding Argentina have created a contractual barrier that would be harder to overturn than ordinary regulations, requiring any future government to explicitly breach the agreement if it wished to open the parks to development. Conservation advocates see this as a model for other large-scale donations in politically unstable contexts, where long-term guarantees are essential to protect investments of time, money and ecological restoration work

Rewilding on the ground: from ranches to wildlife strongholds

The lands now entering the national park system were not pristine wilderness when the Tompkins began acquiring them; many were overgrazed sheep stations, depleted cattle ranches or fragmented estates with degraded soils and reduced biodiversity. Through Rewilding Argentina and local partners, the areas have undergone:

• Removal of fencing and infrastructure that blocked wildlife movement.

• Restoration of native grasslands, wetlands and forests

• Reintroduction of key species such as jaguars in Iberá, giant anteaters, tapirs and multiple bird species.

• Development of low-impact tourism infrastructure, including trails, visitor centers and community-run lodges, to generate local jobs tied to conservation rather than extraction

In Iberá alone, the transformation has turned a once-threatened wetland into a growing stronghold for jaguars, marsh deer and other emblematic species, while attracting visitors from across Argentina and abroad. The new national park designations are expected to bring additional federal resources for rangers, monitoring and community programs, further stabilizing the long-term outlook for these landscapes.

Tensions, criticism and the path ahead

The Tompkins conservation model has not been without controversy. In both Chile and Argentina, critics have at times accused the project of “green colonialism,” arguing that wealthy foreigners were buying up huge swathes of land and imposing a conservation vision without sufficient local input. Concerns have also been raised about restrictions on traditional land uses, such as hunting, grazing and small-scale farming, within and around the new parks.

In response, Tompkins Conservation and Rewilding Argentina have increasingly emphasized co-management arrangements, local employment and partnerships with provincial governments and Indigenous communities. The 99-year clause itself can be seen as part of this evolution: by binding the Argentine state to long-term protection, the deal shifts ultimate control from a private foundation to the public sector, while still ensuring that the original conservation intent is honored.

Looking ahead, the success of the agreement will depend on adequate funding for park management, effective enforcement against poaching and illegal logging, and continued collaboration with local residents to ensure that conservation delivers tangible benefits. With Argentina currently facing budget pressures and staffing cuts in its national parks system, the risk of “paper parks”—protected in name but not in practice—remains a challenge that the Tompkins network and its partners will need to help address.

A blueprint for private-to-public conservation

The Argentine land transfer adds a new chapter to a growing global trend in which private philanthropy and conservation NGOs work with governments to create or expand protected areas, often using innovative legal structures to lock in long-term safeguards. By combining large-scale land assembly, ecological restoration and a legally binding 99-year protection clause, the Tompkins deal offers a potential template for other high-stakes conservation landscapes where political risk and short-term economic pressures threaten to undermine long-term environmental goals.

For Kristine Tompkins, who rose from a shipping clerk at Patagonia to its first CEO before devoting her life to conservation, the agreement represents both a personal and institutional legacy: a way to ensure that the lands she and Doug Tompkins spent decades restoring remain wild, public and protected well beyond their lifetimes.