Chile is an extraordinary country for nature conservation, especially when thinking of its southern region of Patagonia. Although problems still exist like everywhere on the planet (as it the case of large-scale salmon farming), the national public seems to have become very involved and very attached to issues connected to conservation and the environment. Support from society is motivating political action from all sides of the spectrum. The current president, Sebastian Piñera, has created a large private conservation area, the Tantauco Park, while the former president, Michelle Bachelet, took unprecedented action to protect Chile's natural beauty, which included the creation of a route of national parks that added 11 million acres of protected lands in Patagonia. Behind a lot of this awakening to conservation values have been the actions taken by Douglas and Kristine Tompkins, who single-handedly protected and restored over a million acres of forests and grasslands that they donated to the state in 2017 as national parks. If you're looking for an immersion into some of the last remaining true wildernesses of the world, there really is no better place than Chilean Patagonia.
