GSPIA’s Philanthropy Forum Presents:Tom Butler, Vice President for Conservation Advocacy, Tompkins Conservation
With Comments from Larry Seltzer, CEO, the Conservation Fund and Caren Glotfelty, Executive Director, Allegheny Parks Conservancy
Working on two continents and over more than three decades, philanthropists at Tompkins Conservation have secured over 13 million wild acres, re-wilded other lands to create more than a dozen new national or regional parks. Their latest and most ambitious gift conserved over 10 million acres of national parklands in the Chilean and Argentinian regions of Patagonia.
Tom Butler will explore the strategies behind Tompkins Conservation’s focus on national park creation, rewilding, and efforts to foster local economic vitality through expanding ecotourism. Sparked by the vision of Kris Tompkins (former CEO of Patagonia) and her late husband Doug Tompkins (founder of Esprit and the North Face) this philanthropy builds on the centuries-old practice of public–private collaboration to safeguard cherished protected lands. In Western Pennsylvania, local foundations have created public parklands and preserved millions of acres in this same vein.