Story of Patagonia & conservation
Wild land, and the people who choose to protect it
Context for where Santuario del Lago sits, the region, its parks, and the long tradition of conservation in southern Chile.
A land worth protecting
Patagonia holds some of the last unbroken temperate wilderness on earth, glacial lakes, old-growth forest, and rivers that draw fly-fishers from around the world.
A conservation tradition
For decades, private conservation has helped protect this region and hand parkland to the public. Santuario del Lago continues that spirit of stewardship on private land.
Stewardship, on the record
A conservation covenant defines what may and may not be built, keeping the shoreline and forest intact for everyone who comes after.
A legacy of conservation
In the spirit of Patagonia's great conservationists
The modern conservation story of Patagonia was written by an American. Douglas Tompkins, the entrepreneur behind The North Face and Esprit, walked away from business at the height of his success and moved to southern Chile, convinced that protecting wild land was the most important thing he could do with his life.
Over the following decades, together with Kristine Tompkins, he bought and protected close to two million acres across Chile and Argentina, buying working ranches and letting the land grow wild again. In 2015 he died on a Patagonian lake, in the country he had given himself to.
In 2018 the work reached its summit: the largest private land donation in history, acreage handed to Chile that, joined with public land, created and expanded a network of national parks across Patagonia.
Santuario del Lago rises in that same landscape and that same tradition, as an independent private conservation project. To own a lot here is not simply to hold land: it is to become its steward, protecting a piece of Patagonia under a recorded conservation covenant, for the generations that follow.
- 1968
Founds The North Face; later co-founds Esprit, an American business icon.
- 1990
Leaves business and moves to southern Chile to devote himself to conservation.
- 1990s–2010s
With Kristine Tompkins, protects ~2 million acres across Chile and Argentina.
- 2015
Dies in a kayaking accident on a Patagonian lake, in the wild country he loved.
- 2018
The largest private land donation in history creates and expands Patagonia's national parks.
Every owner, a conservationist
The covenant that protects your lot protects the shoreline, the native forest and the views, kept intact by design. Your ownership becomes your legacy, on the record.
A public landscape
The national parks this movement helped create are open to the public across Patagonia, the landscape you would become part of.
Santuario del Lago is an independent private conservation project, not affiliated with Tompkins Conservation or Rewilding Chile.
Santuario del Lago is an independent private conservation project, not affiliated with Tompkins Conservation or Rewilding Chile.