CONSERVACION LAND TRUST FUNDRAISER - McMAHAN PHILANTHROPY

David Bruce McMahan of McMahan Securities, and Jim Pruitt, a resident of Fisher Island, held a fundraiser in February of 2007 for the Conservación Patagonica, a foundation headed by Kristine Tompkins, former CEO of the Patagonia Company. Dozens of Fisher Island and Miami residents attended the event and enjoyed cocktails and hor d'oeuvres while listening to presentations from the founders of the Conservación Patagonica and the Conservation Land Trust.

The mission of the Conservación Patagonica is to preserve intact ecosystems by acquiring and protecting privately owned wildlands, and ultimately returning these landholdings to the public domain for permanent protection in the form of national parks or reserves. The foundation's major focus for the next decade is to add to the 173,000 acres it first acquired in 2004 and to turn these once over-grazed lands into a national park that supports the full range of the region's biodiversity.

The Conservación Patagonica also supports the 155,000 acre Monte León National Park on the coast of Argentina and the 38,000 acres that comprise El Rincón, also in Argentina.

Kristine Tompkins is a veteran of land preservation. Together with her husband Doug Tompkins, the founder of the Conservation Land Trust, (www.theconservationlandtrust.org) a U.S. environmental foundation dedicated to the creation and expansion of national and provincial parks in order to protect unique fragile ecosystems in perpetuity, Kristine helped create the Pumalín Park (www.parquepumalin.cl) in southern Chile.

The Conservation Land Trust also finances programs that protect wildlife, efforts to re-introduce endangered species into the wild and restoration of natural habitats. The Land Trust also encourages local development programs, especially in the area of ecotourism, ecologically sound agriculture, and environmental education, as well as construction projects that provide appropriate infrastructure for public access to natural areas. In this way both conservation and a productive contribution to the local economy are achieved.

The Conservation Land Trust was founded by Doug Tompkins in 1991, when he first bought 42,000 acres of evergreen temperate rainforest in Chile and set it aside for conservation. Over the next few years 700,000 acres were added to form the Pumalín Park. These lands were declared a Nature Sanctuary by the Chilean government in 2005.

Kristine and Doug Tompkins hope that these projects will act as a model for other private conservation initiatives. Wildlands philanthropy has been responsible for thousands of projects all over the world. Every National Park in North America had some measure of private philanthropy involved in its development. Efforts like Conservation Land Trust aim to apply this philosophy of protection and conservation to other unique and fragile ecosystems all over the world. If you are interested in visiting any of their parks or donating to their foundations, please contact them at:

Conservacion Patagonia: info@conservacionpatagonica.org
The Conservation Land Trust: info@conservationlandtrust.org