Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas…
'We have been buying all the land around us. We started with 110,000 acres and now we have 150,000,' he says. 'I want my children and grandchildren to remember me for making one more million? No! So I now have many projects like this.'
While yachts and jets marked the status of last century's super rich, today the stylish accessory for millionaires is their very own ecosystem.
From Patagonia to Montana, hundreds of thousands of acres are being bought by wealthy businessmen and placed in private charities, conservation trusts or handed over to governments as a gift…
'It is pretty hard for a country to turn down a gift of 300,000 hectares [740,000 acres],' says Douglas Tompkins, 65, the American-born founder of Esprit and The North Face… Then he read a book on deep ecology, the philosophy pioneered by Norwegian Arne Naess, who calls for a radical re-evaluation of man's relationship with the planet.
Tompkins was an instant convert. He sold his estate, the art and everything else, then moved to the remote wilds of Patagonia.
Since 1992, Tompkins has spent nearly £110m buying or organising the purchase of around 25 properties covering 2.2m acres in Chile and Argentina…
Dutch businessman Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, who died in 2006, was a leading figure in the movement. From his 82,000-acre estate in Scotland - which he proudly advertised as public lands - van Vlissingen managed supermarket chains, energy companies and investment trusts. His passion was Africa's beleaguered national parks.
In barely two years, Vlissingen poured millions of dollars into the then incomplete Marakele National Park in South Africa, a job that would have taken at least 10 years without his funding. Today Marakele is part of a far bigger park system and is a healthy home to African wildlife, including elephant, white and black rhinoceros, buffalo, hyena, cheetah, wild dog, giraffe and eland…
(more at the link)
No comments:
Post a Comment