US businessman campaigns for Argentine marsh ecology

This US multi-millionaire and former businessman co-founded the North Face and Esprit clothing brands.

He is taking on farmers whom he accuses of polluting the nation's vast northern sweet-water marshes in Corrientes province, which is near the Paraguayan and Brazilian borders.

He bought 1,390 square kilometers (540 square miles) of land around these marshes in 1998 and is trying to persuade the authorities to turn the rich tropical ecosystem into a 13,000 square kilometer national park.

Tompkins spends six months of the year here, and the other six on his rural properties in Chile, yet is widely regarded with suspicion and resentment as a misguided interloper.

"We were told here in Corrientes, 'People say that you are here to steal water.' So I said: 'How am I gonna do it, to transport it and take it to somewhere else?'

"They said: 'By the Internet.' And I said: 'If I can do that, I don't need the water'," Tompkins said.

Doug, as the diminutive and trim 66-year-old is called by his employees, said he would not be dissuaded from his environmentalism, a passion he discovered while reading works by Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher.

He seeks to persuade opponents through defensive steps, deploying reason and philanthropic gestures.

Along with his wife Kristine, he has donated hundreds of thousands of protected hectares in southern Chile and Argentina.

But he also goes on the offensive: using his large fortune to buy up cattle farms where he lets nature and indigenous deer take over; reintroducing marsh deer, anteaters and species that had disappeared; and bringing legal cases against rice farmers, whom he says use chemicals that upset the local ecology.

"Corrientes is badly damaged, especially over grazing and big industrial rice operations," he said.

"You can see how people have abused the land. Common sense tells us that if you continue to abuse the landscapes, there will be negative and unpleasant repercussions."

Project Iberia, an organisation he funds, has won seven cases so far.

"Argentine laws protecting the water are very solid," explained Sofia Heinonen, the 41-year-old head of the project, sitting at a table covered with pamphlets that urge locals to saddle up their horses and celebrate the latest supreme court victory.

But the approach has earned Tompkins enemies.

"We don't believe in this myth of the billionaire philanthropist. Tompkins is face of the power of money - part of the rich and powerful who want to take the natural resources of Latin America," said Mabel Moulin, a spokeswoman for the Ibera Heritage Foundation for the Correntinos.

The green flag of her group flies at the entrance of several farms in the marshlands, a symbol of defiance.

Moulin charges that Tompkins is forcing poor rural workers off the land he buys with little concern for the human hardship he is causing.

"Before anteaters or deer, we should be defending the people," she said.

Nevertheless, Tompkins is convinced of his mission. "You must keep your position, do your thing, do it well, have results to show. And over time, you always win."

"Humans are part of a larger system, they are not living in a glass box above nature. They should take into consideration as we develop our economies and our cultures that we have to share our planet with other creatures," he added.