Corcovado National Park

| Chile |

Area: 988,445 acres (400,010 hectares)
Estimated Carbon Storage: 246 million metric tonnes

Chile’s sixth-largest national park boasts nearly 1 million acres of primeval rainforest, fjords, rivers, and lakes. The estuaries where the Corcovado and Tic-Toc Rivers spill into the Bay of Corcovado are exceptional wildlife habitat, supporting immense colonies of shorebirds, sea lions, and penguins. The bay is a crucial nursery for the blue whale, the largest animal on Earth. An attempt by Douglas Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard to reach the summit of the Corcovado Volcano was included in the documentary 180 Degrees South, which also documented earlier adventures of those two climbers in Patagonia.

Park History

Through his nonprofit foundation, Doug Tompkins and his friend, philanthropist Peter Buckley, acquired roughly 208,000 acres along the coast south of Chaitén in 1994. During the Lagos administration, this property was donated to the Chilean state, combined with adjacent fiscal land, and designated a national park in 2005. The park was further expanded as part of the parklands deal between the Bachelet government and Tompkins Conservation in 2018.