Chile gets park made by U.S. businessman

Clinton Porteous
The Christian Science Monitor
10 December 2003
The Seattle Times
Copyright (c) 2003 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.

Santiago , Chile

SANTIAGO , CHILE American travelers have long been drawn to the rugged beauty of Patagonia , at the southernmost tip of South America .

With the cheap price of land in Argentina and Chile these days, Americans are part of a great foreign real-estate boom reshaping what is still home to some of the last great wilderness on Earth.

One of the biggest players is Doug Tompkins, co-founder of the sportswear company, Esprit. Tompkins created a network of 11 wilderness parks covering almost 2 million acres across Chile and Argentina .

The centerpiece is Pumalin Park in southern Chile , which covers 738,000 acres of pristine temperate rainforest and cost Tompkins more than $30 million. After six years of delays, it was officially declared a nature sanctuary yesterday at a ceremony in Chile 's capital, Santiago .

This agreement will give protection to the park, ban development and offer tax breaks. The park already attracts 10,000 visitors a year who come to enjoy the forests, waterfalls, fjords and hot springs . There are no entry fees.

While Tompkins is helping preserve the land, several large developments have sprung up recently, bringing a much-needed economic boost to the region, especially on the Argentine side.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros is one of the largest private landholders in Argentina . He also owns a stake in Banco Hipotecario that is a major lender to the building industry and is valued at more than $10 billion.

Sparsely populated Patagonia covers about a third of Argentina and Chile more than 400,000 square miles.

Former Argentine President Carlos Menem got rid of restrictions on foreign ownership in the 1990s. The sell-off has been accelerated by the economic crisis where the peso has lost two-thirds of its value since the beginning of 2002.

On the Chilean side, a free-trade agreement with the U.S. is due to start Jan. 1 and will make investing in Chile easier and more secure for Americans.

Other major outside investors include media heavyweight Ted Turner and Charlie Lewis, who owns the Planet Hollywood franchise for South America , as well as investors from Europe and neighboring Brazil .

American companies are also leading to uncover mineral wealth, particularly oil and gold.