Rincon del Socorro

In 2001, Douglas Tompkins, a philanthropist and conservationist, acquired the farm Rincón del Socorro to create a 74,131- acre natural reserve that would be handled by his foundation, The Conservation Land Trust (CLT). Acquiring Rincón del Socorro and other fields in Iberá had a simple but ambitious aim: to create the greatest natural park in Argentina, return the locally extinct fauna and foster an economy based on ecotourism. Tompkins and his team restored and expanded the old buildings of the farm, removed the cattle from the fields, eliminated hundreds of miles of fences and initiated the biggest process of reintroduction of locally extinct fauna (REWILDING) in the Americas. Giant anteaters, pampas deer and peccaries have already been released. Part of this process concluded with the donation of lands for the creation of the Iberá National Park which, together with the provincial reserve, constitutes the great Park Iberá.