Patagonia, Chile & Argentina — The Route of Parks Rewilding Corridor

The story of Patagonia's conservation transformation begins with a radical act of private philanthropy: Douglas and Kris Tompkins spent decades purchasing degraded agricultural land throughout Chilean and Argentine Patagonia, restoring it to native ecosystems, and donating the finished parks to their respective governments. The result is extraordinary: Tompkins Conservation's legacy organizations (Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile, now independent nonprofits) have created or expanded 17 national parks totaling 14.8 million land acres and 30 million acres of marine national parks — the largest private-to-public conservation land transfer in history. The Route of Parks — a 2,800-kilometer corridor linking all 17 national parks from Puerto Montt to Cape Horn — is both a wilderness experience and a functioning rewilding laboratory. Species returning to landscapes where they had been locally extirpated include the Andean condor (25 birds released through the Manku Project, now monitored by satellite transmitters across Chilean and Argentine airspace), the jaguar (14 cubs born in Rewilding Argentina's reintroduction program in Iberá and El Impenetrable Parks — the first wild jaguar births in the region in 70 years), and the huemul deer (a new subpopulation discovered in 2025, with the National Huemul Corridor established in 2024 to reconnect isolated populations genetically). Puma densities in Torres del Paine and Patagonia National Park now rank among the highest recorded anywhere on earth. Visitors who book guided wildlife photography expeditions with operators like Swoop Patagonia or Journeys with Purpose can expect high-probability sightings of puma, guanaco, condor, and rhea against a backdrop of jagged granite spires and glacial lakes of impossible blue. The tourism model here is deliberately low-volume: lodges are small, guides are local, and a meaningful portion of revenue flows into park maintenance and rewilding program costs. The Route of Parks also functions as a rural economic catalyst: local communities from Cochrane to Puerto Natales have built park-centric businesses — guide services, artisan cooperatives, horse-trek operations — that did not exist before the conservation corridor was established. This is regenerative economics at landscape scale.