LA: What was that process like in terms of working with these governments and a-, and, I guess, like, creating that accessibility?
KT: Well, it’s a process because when we, in the early years, in the early ’90s, of course, there was great suspicion about what we were doing. We were buying up large tracks of forest and not cutting them down, and that was highly suspicious, uh, irregular. So it was kind of rough at the beginning.
LA: Do you think part of it was to do with the fact that it was, you were two non-Chileans coming in and with this radical idea?
KT: When I look back 25 years, 28 years, and I see the tremendous suspiciousness surrounding us, we were known as the couple who cut Chile in half. Um, people thought we were looking to create a new Jewish state, even though we were raised as Anglicans, and all these outrageous things said about it. Today when I look at it, I think things like that, the country, it was new to the country, and I think these things would happen anywhere, frankly.
There’s always a first, and the first is usually the one who has to tackle these suspicions and, and, and kind of ride it out because I think that culture is so strong that when, as it begins to evolve, even in a small direction, you have to be prepared for a reaction that won’t always be positive. And we, boy, did we learn that with great humility, honestly. Um, and now, everybody takes our work for granted. And, um, what people really forget, oftentimes, Tompkins Conservation is the Doug and Kris Show. There are hundreds of Chileans who worked on the Chilean National Parks, and Argentines on the other side of the border. So these parks were never just created by Doug and Kris.
LA: After the break, how Kris and her team have been releasing jaguars back into the wild after a 70-year absence.
Condé Nast Traveler writer Alex Postman, who I think you maybe crossed paths with-
KT: Yes.
LA: … when she was reporting this story, um, wrote a feature for us last year about rewilding in Argentina, and she opens with this beautiful description of seeing a very faint, but very much there, paw print of a jaguar in the Earth.
KT: Yes. Well, you know, I’m very spoiled in this regard [laughs] because I get out there quite a bit. I mean, it brings tears to your eyes the first time you see jaguars out free after 70 years gone missing. It can be the small mammals. It … I get to see a lot of it, and it’s something you never take for granted because they’re free, but you’re always vigilant. Did we really take care of the reasons they went extinct in the first place? So the work we have come to learn is actually never over. And, um, you know, it’s emotional when you’re talking about rewilding and local communities. Top predators such as the jaguar are not easy to bring back socially, generally. In Corrientes, Argentina, they couldn’t wait for the jaguars to come back because those cats represent the way they see themselves, the Correntino, the, the valiance of, o-, of a Correntino. So, in that way, you have the whole province protecting them now when, in fact, that was utterly missing when they’d gone extinct in the first place. So you, you’re watching yourselves and everything around you evolve as these species come back.