Doug Tompkins
| Douglas Tompkins | |
|---|---|
Tompkins in 2009
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| Born |
Douglas Rainsford Tompkins March 20, 1943 Conneaut, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | December 8, 2015 (aged 72) Coyhaique, Chile |
| Cause of death | Hypothermia |
| Occupation | businessman, conservationist |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | Summer Tompkins Walker, Quincey Tompkins Imhoff |
| Awards | New Species Award, Good Steward Award, David R. Brower Award |
| Website | www |
Douglas Rainsford Tompkins (March 20, 1943 – December 8, 2015) was an American conservationist, outdoorsman, philanthropist, filmmaker, agriculturalist, and businessman who assembled and preserved the land which became the largest gift of private land to government in South America.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, he and Susie Tompkins Buell, his first wife, co-founded and ran two companies: the outdoor equipment and clothing company The North Face and the Esprit clothing company. Following their divorce and Tompkins' departure from the business world in 1989, he became active in environmental and land conservation causes.
In the 1990s Tompkins and his second wife, Kris McDivitt Tompkins bought and conserved over 2 million acres (810,000 ha) of wilderness in Chile and Argentina, more than any other private individuals in the region, thus becoming among the largest private land-owners in the world. The Tompkinses were focused on park creation, wildlife recovery, ecological agriculture, and activism, with the goal of saving biodiversity.
Tompkins was born in Conneaut, Ohio on March 20, 1943, the son of an antiques dealer and decorator. He spent the first few years of his life in New York City before his family moved to Millbrook, New York. He graduated from Indian Mountain School, a pre-prep school in Lakeville, Connecticut, in 1957. In his senior year at Pomfret School in Connecticut, Tompkins was expelled for various minor infractions. He returned to his hometown in Millbrook, but did not graduate from high school.
Tompkins spent the years between 1960 and 1962 ski racing and rock climbing in Colorado, Europe, and South America. In 1963, Tompkins founded the California Mountaineering Guide Service. It was during this time he met Susie Russell, a casino employee who gave him a lift while hitch-hiking to Lake Tahoe. They married in 1964 in San Francisco, where Tompkins borrowed $5,000 from a bank to set up The North Face, now a global retailing company.
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Wikipedia