Patagonia buy and viral wildlife

The viral Patagonia claim points to a real conservation story: Douglas Tompkins and Kris Tompkins spent decades buying Patagonian land and donating much of it for parks. (tompkinsconservation.org) Douglas Tompkins co-founded The North Face and later Tompkins Conservation; Kris Tompkins was chief executive of Patagonia before leaving the company in 1993. Doug Tompkins died in Chile in December 2015, and Kris Tompkins now leads the conservation group they built. (tompkinsconservation.org) (legacy.com) The number circulating in social posts appears to compress a longer timeline. Tompkins Conservation said in 2018 that it and its partners had protected roughly 13 million acres in Chile and Argentina, and that a Chile deal that year created 10 million acres of new national parks with about 1 million acres coming from Tompkins land donations. (tompkinsconservation.org) One of the best-known pieces of that effort is Patagonia National Park in Chile. Tompkins Conservation says the project’s total planned area is about 280,000 hectares, and Rewilding Chile says the park was built from former reserves plus the Chacabuco Valley ranch that Tompkins Conservation acquired and later donated to the state. (tompkinsconservation.org) (rewildingchile.org) The broader project was never just land buying. Tompkins Conservation and its Chilean partners tied the park work to restoration, including rebuilding habitat and supporting wildlife programs inside protected areas. (rewildingchile.org) (tompkinsconservation.org) That conservation story moved online this week beside a different kind of animal content: backyard clips of goats and squirrels that spread because they looked harmless and funny. Federal wildlife agencies in the United States say those encounters can turn risky when people start feeding or conditioning wild animals to expect food. (aphis.usda.gov) (fws.gov) The United States Department of Agriculture says feeding wildlife can cause malnutrition, property damage, and aggressive behavior, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service says it can also spread disease and make animals lose their fear of people. The National Park Service gives the same advice in parks: human snacks can replace the foods animals actually need. (aphis.usda.gov) (fws.gov) (nps.gov) So the week’s animal posts landed on two tracks at once: one about people using private wealth to convert ranchland into protected habitat, and another about agencies warning that even small backyard interactions can change wild behavior. Both stories end with the same basic line — leave more room for animals to stay wild. (tompkinsconservation.org) (fws.gov)