Patagonia National Park: Chile

Winner, Gold Award, IBPA Book Awards

Banff Mountain Literature Award Finalist

Andean condors soaring over snow-capped mountains. Waving grasslands where herds of guanacos roam. Mountain lions haunting the shadows . . . Patagonia National Park offers an extraordinary combination of natural beauty and abundant wildlife.

Centered on southern Chile’s Chacabuco Valley, it showcases the fascinating natural and cultural history of this amazing windswept region at the end of the world. The park exists today due to a committed team of conservationists who forged an innovative publicprivate partnership catalyzed by private philanthropy

In Patagonia National Park: Chile, photographer Linde Waidhofer captures the region’s singular beauty. For more than a decade Waidhofer witnessed this national park’s founders-Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the late Douglas Tompkins, and the Tompkins Conservation team-as they shepherded the land’s transition from former sheep ranch to world-class national park.

With contributions from former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, Yvon Chouinard, and others, Patagonia National Park: Chile invites readers to experience a place that is protected foremost as the home to its wild residents, and that offers human visitors a chance to reconnect with the land’s natural rhythms. Beyond this, the park’s creation is a globally notable example of “rewilding,” of helping nature heal, and ultimately of holding onto wild, radical hope for a future when all of life’s diversity, including people, has freedom to flourish and continue to evolve.

Author Biography

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins is cofounder and the current president of Tompkins Conservation. She was a key figure in the creation of Patagonia National Park in Chile and other conservation projects that have resulted in more than 12 million acres protected in new parks in Chile and Argentina. She holds several global leadership positions in conservation, including that of United Nations Protected Areas Ambassador. 

Michelle Bachelet is the first woman to have been elected president of Chile, a position she held for two terms, 2006-2010 and 2014-2018. She studied medicine before entering politics and was Minister of Health and Minister of Defense during the presidency of Ricardo Lagos. An advocate for the rights of women and the oppressed, in 2018 she was appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Yvon Chouinard is an itinerant adventurer, passionate activist, and iconoclastic businessman. In 1973, he founded Patagonia, a mission-driven company known for its environmental and social initiatives. Cofounder of the Fair Labor Association, 1% for the Planet, Textile Exchange, The Conservation Alliance, and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, he is a surfer, mountain climber, gardener, and falconer, and he is particularly fond of tenkara fly fishing.