The Tompkins Foundation [donation] of one million acres will help form a network of 17 national parks along Patagonia that spans most of Chile. This donation will aid efforts in "rewilding" Patagonia, an effort to roll back decades of development and deforestation. The Chilean government agreed to pledge an additional 10 million acres under Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. This expansion will create five brand new national parks and add acreage to other parks, creating what is called the "Route of Parks" running North-South along Chile. The total 11 million acres of protected national park land is larger than Denmark and three times larger than Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks in the US combined.
The expanded parks are anticipated to aid in Chile's ecotourism, generating an estimated $270 million per year in revenue and providing over 40,000 jobs to locals. The new protected areas include a diverse collection of ecosystems from deserts to volcanoes to rainforests. With this addition of national park acreage Chile climbs the ranks in countries with the highest percentage of protected land, comparable in percentage to Costa Rica.It remains to be seen (at least by me; I couldn't find anything anywhere) exactly what these parks will be, what their maps will be, what services and infrastructure they will offer, etc.
But most likely, it will increase the ability of hikers to go and visit them. And heck; there may well be a Patagonian Andes traverse someday that allows thru-hikers to cross from one to another to another.
EDIT: I should note that the comparison to Yellowstone is, of course, flawed and kind of silly. Yellowstone is a national park, of course, but it doesn't exist in isolation. In fact, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) which includes both Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park is also surrounded by national forests and federally designated Wilderness Areas, which are more restrictive (although they sometimes overlap) than national parks anyway. The total GYE protected land area is 12 million acres, compared to the Chilean total of 11 million.
So the comparison to Yellowstone is—while technically correct—actually so woefully obtuse as to possibly be deliberately dishonest. Certainly the comparison should have the opposite conclusion as the writers make. Whether that is because of the writer's ignorance of the rest of the protected areas in the GYE, or if it's being deliberately omitted to create a Narrative is unclear.
