Washington diary: Nature v nation

By Matt Frei
BBC News, Buenos Aires

The encroaching and inevitable heat of summer is beginning to boil Beltway brains.

Summertime and the living in DC is getting, well, quite hot

The mosquitoes, seemingly more determined after a freezing winter, are limbering up for battle and the political world is consumed with hundreds of acts of self-mutilation.

Summer is nature's special revenge against the ills of the Federal Capitol. What bliss then to escape Washington, fly 10 hours south and emerge in the clear light of an Argentine dawn.

Here in the southern hemisphere, autumn has turned the air crisp and the shadows long, and Buenos Aires with its alluring mixture of chaos and elegance is everything that everyone has promised it would be.

We have come to meet two very wealthy Americans who are at the forefront of the conservation movement and in the middle of a heated debate that pits those who want to save planet earth against those who want to protect Argentina's national sovereignty.

Infinity and beyond

Douglas and Kris Tompkins are unlikely green warriors. They both made a fortune in the retail business.

He founded the outdoors clothing brand North Face and then the High Street fashion empire Esprit. She was the CEO of Patagonia, the sportswear company. They sold up many years ago and used their riches to buy up large chunks of Chile and Argentina.

Argentina's vast landscape: imposing and never-ending

In essence, their dream is to conserve some of the most pristine bits of nature's real estate, re-introduce species faced with extinction and then hand as much as they can back to the host government as a National Park. They have already done this in Chile and they aim to do it in Argentina.

In order to meet them in their natural habitat, we drove 10 hours north-east of the capital through the flat plain, la pampa humeda.

The roads and the horizon stretch into infinity. One has the sensation of never arriving.

Every few miles bemused cows and buffalo throw you a fleeting glance, as if it to say: "Why did you bother coming?"

I couldn't see the point of so much flatness, until I arrived at a place called Estancia del Socorro, a huge estate which the Tompkins call home for six months of the year.

The ranch - which also houses a simple but immaculate hotel favoured by serious bird watchers, a small collection of bungalows for the ranch staff, a tiny school and an airstrip - is a true oasis.

In the morning mist parrots, cardinals, doves and dozens of other species of birds create a riot of squeaks and laughter.

Cayman alligators bask in the sun before slithering silently into the surrounding rivers and lagoons. And everywhere lazy capybaras mope around looking for food and appreciation.

After a few bottles of excellent Argentine wine I too was ready to go into battle on behalf of depleted nitrates

There is no television, no mobile phone reception and no desire to go on line for anything. My brain went into lockdown.

The only interruption comes from the Tompkins themselves. Although they clearly love their life in the middle of nowhere, their concern for nature leaves them restless.

Douglas sports a shaggy white beard and looks like Ted Turner after a few months in the wild without a barber. Kris greets you barefoot and invites you to slouch on the sofa as much as she does.

They're a charming Californian combination of cool and passion. Baby-boomers on a serious mission.

Water wars?

Douglas has a whole diatribe about the global neglect of topsoil. It was, to be honest, not a subject close to my heart but after a few bottles of excellent Argentine wine I too was ready to go into battle on behalf of depleted nitrates.

The Tompkins' land is located in Corrientes province

Their cause is catching because in El Socorro you are surrounded by its results.

So, it is all the more troubling to find that the Tompkins have incurred the wrath of a whole array of Argentines.

There is Padre Luis Adis in the local town of Mercedes, one of four local priests who has signed a letter condemning the "foreignerisation" of Argentina's land.

In Buenos Aires, the mild-mannered, urbane spokesman of the Archdiocese, Padre Gustavo Boquin, warned that the Tompkins could jeopardise Argentina's national security because they own 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) on top of the world's third largest aquifer.

"What if there is a water war?" the kindly priest suggested. "What will happen to our most precious natural resource? America went to Iraq for oil. They could come here for water!"

"They won't need to!" I suggested tongue-in-cheek. "If a gringo already owns the aquifer, they just need to build a pipeline!"

The point wasn't taken.

Then there is Luis D'Elia, the former secretary of land in the government of President Nestor Kirchner - before he was kicked out last November for being too radical.

The war in Iraq has fuelled suspicions about Americans' motives

He has turned out to be the Tompkins' most vocal opponent.

"The Americans are in cahoots with the Pentagon which, as you know, is building an airbase across the border in Paraguay," he said.

"And did you also know?," Mr D'Elia added, "that Barbara Bush came down the other day to buy 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of land in Paraguay?"

A stocky man with an angry mien, he unfurls a huge map of Argentina in his office and points out all the pieces of "tierra gringa", the gringo lands, like a general pinpointing the enemy.

Culture clash

The issue has not caught the public's imagination but it could if stirred up and manipulated.

Five per cent of Argentina's land mass is apparently owned by 25 foreign families.

Some Americans are more popular in Argentina than others, it seems

Most of them are wealthy Americans like the Tompkins and all the evidence suggests that they are less interested in drilling for water or melting the Patagonian ice and selling it in plastic bottles than they are in splashing out their money on Mother Nature.

When I point out that the remaining 90% of land is owned by only 8% of the Argentine population - ie the rich estancieros or ranchers - this is greeted with a shrug and an explanation that "these are OUR people, not outsiders!"

The arguments are poisoned by a traditional, not to say plausible, suspicion of America's big foot in the region. They have been enriched with a very contemporary loathing of the Bush administration.

The biggest foreign landowner in Argentina is in fact Luciano Benetton, the Italian fashion tsar. (What is with fashion people and the southern tip of Latin America?) But being Italian, his name is rarely vilified.

The bitter debate also reflects a curious and irrational clash of cultures. The Tompkins are seen by some as part of the oil slick of globalisation that allows foreign capital to buy up sacred national land.

And yet they themselves hate the forces of globalisation that have polluted the air, drained the topsoils, warmed the planet and generally meddled with Nature's order of things. They practise what they preach, for instance serving only food grown on their farms or sold in the local markets.

Common cause

If the planet is in peril, then the solution has to be allowed to cross national boundaries after a transparent dialogue that puts as many parties as possible on the same page.

If the anteater thrives here, we will have won a victory

This has not yet happened. But help may come in the unlikely form of a giant anteater.

The animal, which was bought by the Tompkins from another province after a colossal amount of red tape is now living in a large corral in El Socorro.

From here it will eventually be released back into the wild as soon as it has been introduced to a mating partner. It is the first example in Argentina of the reintroduction of an endangered species into its erstwhile habitat.

"The whole province of Corrientes is watching!" Kris Tompkins told me as we waited for the animal's elongated snout to slurp up its mouth-watering diet of mashed meat, eggs, bananas and vegetables.

"If the anteater thrives here we will have won a victory!" she said.

"And this will of course help your cause?" I suggested to Douglas Tompkins.

He kicked my foot and said: "Not my cause. Yours too. Ours!"

---

Send us your comments in reaction to Matt Frei's Washington diary using the link below:

Click here to send us your comments