Wednesday, Feb 11

Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes the best ideas are those we stumble upon. If we tried planning them, we might conclude that they were too hard, too ambitious, too … impossible. Take today’s Climate Champs, a couple of American conversationists, Doug and Kris Tompkins, who purchased the 70,000-hectare Valle Chacabuco ranch in Chile with the goal of simply protecting it. “At the time, I don’t think Doug nor I had any idea what that even meant,” Kris told Bluedot reporter Diane Selkirk. “We didn’t go into it thinking, oh, this could be a national park.”

But that’s exactly what their parcel of land has become.

Twenty years ago, that would have seemed inconceivable. “Not long ago, much of this land was a sprawling cattle ranch, its forests cleared, grasslands depleted, and wildlife pushed to the margins,” Diane tells us. “Standing here, camera to my eye, it’s hard to reconcile what I’m seeing. It feels enduring. Yet this landscape has been deliberately rebuilt.”

Hiking the trails at Mallin Colorado offers views that take in the north ice fields and stretch from Lake General Carrera to Lake Bertrand. – Photo by Diane Selkirk

The couple hired locals to relocate livestock, tear out fences, and restore habitat. Then they built trails and infrastructure. “Slowly, the land began to heal, to rewild, and native species returned: guanacos, condors, pumas, and even the endangered huemul deer, Chile’s national emblem,” we learn. Today, Tompkins Conservation, the organization the couple eventually formed, has helped create or expand 16 national parks and protected more than 15 million acres in partnerships with Chile and Argentina.

Diane reports that, “they also spearheaded the Route of Parks: a 1,700-mile scenic and conservation corridor from Puerto Montt to Cape Horn encompassing 28 million acres and 17 national parks.” While others are invited to marvel at the transformation, Kris has some sobering wisdom: “In today’s world, protection alone isn’t enough. Parks must be politically resilient, economically viable, and socially valued. They must justify their existence again and again.”

Expansively,

Dot

Juniper Ridge crafts sustainable home fragrance, body products, and teas inspired by the wild beauty of the American West. The Oakland-based brand forages and sustainably harvests wild plants before using steam distillation to capture these plants’ incredible essences in scents. Find this and more sustainable products in the Bluedot Living Collection.

For more Bluedot Climate Quick Tips, click here.

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