When Doug got an idea, he sought it out without reservations, bringing in the best experts to inform his understanding.

The man who coined deep ecology, Naess defined where the human race should go.

Mander provided deep insight into globalization, a new word at the time, and the concept of advertising for good.

An overarching influence that included George Sessions, Bill Duvall, Sigmund Kvalovo, overlapping with the Wildlands Project, plus Dan Imhoff and Tom Butler, who helped shape the concepts central to Tompkins Conservation.

Doug Tompkins was influenced by The Land Institute and perennial agriculture. Wes Jackson and Wendall Berry influenced model farm ideas.

As clearcutting devastated the Pacific Northwest, Doug’s interest in the management of forests resulted in the book Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.

Raised awareness of the need for large-scale wilderness connectivity; influenced by the thinking of David Quammen, Dave Foreman and the Y2Y project. It produced vision maps of wilderness connected through a connective tissue of ranchland, farmland and developed land. Regional efforts are still working to establish these vital synapses across the landscape.

The wilderness itself was calling Doug.

— Quincey Tompkins

You always want the chance to control your narrative.

Four important influences on Doug:

1. Doug would get an idea and go seek it out, or bring people in for high-level conversations. I remember sustainable ag was one, that was when he was looking for some kind of model (the land institute, perennial agriculture, secondary was wendell berry’s ideas)
2. There was a huge push about clearcutting and the management of forests that led to the wildfire book
3. Jerry Mander and the founder of the anti globalization movement
4. North American Wildlands project (WILDERNESS Reconnectivity at a really big scale) quammen, etc, the wild areas were were protecting in north america were becoming isolated, for wild species to survive they needed wildways, that was the project, Y2Y was one of the early visions. Dave foreman and others came up with these vision maps of how wilderness could be connected. The connective tissue is ranchland, farmland and developed land, it would take regional efforts to create these synapses across the landscape and they’re still working on it.
   + The overarching influence of deep ecology itself

Doug really didn’t appreciate incremental anything. It was all or nothing.

These streams were interbraided into the river that became the work. It all came out of study, philanthropy and on-the-ground practice. (Dan Imhoff) Reed Noss, Michael Soule, Wendell Berry meetings had the idea of connectivity. They felt that agriculturists were the enemy and the conservationists were looking down on them. The book Farming with the Wild  integrated both–how wild can a farm be, how much agriculture can take place in some kind of wildway. Doug was meeting with the best minds–he came to them or they came to him. It was fireworks all the time. That whole first decade was laying the foundation for where Doug Tompkins would go. At the end of it he was off and running.

He was the only person who was supporting the work of Wes Jackson, Dave Foreman and the North American Wilderness recovery people. He made sure that Arne Naess’s work was institutionalized and published so he had real stature. Doug wrote very prescient, powerful books that are still coming true today. It started with Clearcut, looking at the wounds of the world from the air.  He made one book after another, going for these industrial scars and that was kind of his style. You wonder when he slept or what he was thinking about when he was sleeping.

What was probably most important about Doug, as a conservationist, is that he flew. He flew very close to the ground but he had a bird’s eye view of what was happening. He looked at conservation like a pilot or a bird, it gave him a unique perspective of what was missing or what could be present in BIG Swaths, that’s not easy to see on the ground. He was restoring things very quickly in Chile, directing each step: get the cattle off, let’s get sheep in here and start a nursery.

Few conservationists were working with agriculture, forestry, translocation and species reintroduction. Doug’s flying helped them all. Plus he was fearless and very skilled. He would take that plane anywhere. That’s really truly what’s missing in the agriculture movement is the landscape perspective. Landscapes of farmers will get it done–that’s a unique perspective still.

The idea of rewilding South America possibly started with Doug’s work starting in  Argentina. I recently saw Astrid Vargas, who used to work with Tompkins Conservation, talking about lynx recovery in Spain. The last thing Doug told her was to work with the farmers, so she did. You have to win communities and farmers over to new levels of acceptance and pride of knowing what they actually have to make the conservation gains. A lot of that came out of the experience of the Ibera wetlands.

Doug carried the torch of North American environmentalism from North America to South America, and in doing so inspired the world. He carried the torch and he never looked back. He was a seeker and really unafraid. If he wanted to talk to somebody he just went and did it. The standards were really high–he got that from Arne–it’s deep work, not superficial. It’s the whole __ [missing word]