Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, a conservationist and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc., has worked with her husband Douglas Tompkins since 1993 to create new national parks that protect and restore wildlands, biodiversity, and thriving communities in Chile and Argentina. Together, they have protected more land than any other private individuals-over 2.2 million acres-and created two national parks, with five more in the works. In 2000, she founded Conservacion Patagonica (CP) to create national parks in Patagonia. As of 2012, CP has established one national park, Monte Leon, Argentina’s first coastal national park, and is over halfway through the Patagonia National Park project, which seeks to establish a new 650,000-acre park in Chile’s Aysen region. (www.conservacionpatagonica.org)
