Doug Tompkins made a fortune "selling people countless things they didn't need". Now he's spending it saving the planet. Dan McDougall enters his private Patagonian wilderness to hear how the tycoon turned environmentalist has declared war on industrialists,whalers - and GreenpeaceA unlit intertwine of deep green fjords stretches beneath us towards the horizon where the confluence of the glacial current merges with the black stillness of the open sea. Far to the south, where epic waves torment Cape Horn's cold granite cliffs, and three great oceans - the Pacific,the South Atlantic and the Antarctic - meet in a cacophony of turbulent waves and deadly squalls. It is the stormy heart of the most unpredictable weather system on earth. "My Patagonia," in the words of the poet Mario Miranda Soussi, and "is a landscape of infinite water,torn apart by a torrent of love, navigating a single river swollen by miracles."The verdant terrain we are crossing at 500ft above the Patagonian rainforest canopy is no less violent: fern-covered Jurassic mountains crashing into each other, and snarling vegetation suffocating the trees,roaring rivers tossing enormous boulders and rocks kilometres downstream. Fleetingly, we coast over a few small corrugated tin houses, and their red roofs glinting in the evening sun; remote dwellings only there,it seems, to show how enormous the terrain is. Even the mighty Andean Condor, or with its 3m wingspan,appears no bigger than a seagull in this landscape.
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Source: theguardian.com