Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face outdoor company who poured millions into conservation, has died after falling into near-freezing waters during a kayak accident in southern Chile.

Tompkins, 72, was taken with acute hypothermia to a hospital in Coyhaique after high winds flipped his adventure kayak during a trip across Lake General Carrera in Patagonia on Tuesday, reports said. He died about six hours after arriving at hospital in the regional capital.

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The pioneering clothing and equipment designer, who also co-founded the Esprit apparel brand, had for the last quarter of a century spent millions of dollars financing national parks. He and wife Kristine saved an estimated two million acres of pristine South American ecosystems.

In 1989 Tompkins abandoned his wealthy corporate lifestyle and estate in San Francisco as he moved to the wilds of Patagonia. Spending months hiking, kayaking and exploring the southern rainforests, Tompkins adopted the values of the deep ecology movement and commenced a determined conservation battle. Beginning in Chile and then in Argentina, he campaigned with coalitions of environmental activists as he battled to stop developers churning through pristine forests, wetlands and coastal prairies.

Tompkins was regularly harassed by the Chilean government and clashed with business interests as he sought to limit what he saw as environmentally destructive industries including salmon farming and logging. However, Sebastián Pinéra – a self-made billionaire and president of Chile from 2010 to 2014 – followed Tompkins’s example by buying up a huge portion of Chiloe island and turning it into a showcase for environmental conservation. Unlike previous Chilean presidents, Pinéra lauded Tompkins for his efforts.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Douglas Tompkins at his property in Ibera, near Carlos Pellegrini in Corrientes Province, Argentina, in 2009. Photograph: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images

In one of his final interviews, published last month in Paula, a Chilean magazine, Tompkins was asked about his legacy. “People will walk on these lands,” he said. “Don’t you think that’s more beautiful than a tomb?”

Despite powerful opposition he remained determined until the end to turn his land holdings into national parks.

“It is pretty hard for a country to turn down a gift of 300,000 hectares,” he explained in a 2007 interview. “In Argentina we had a big blow-up over the purchase of conservation lands … then we said to the ministries and to [then] President [Nestor] Kirchner, ‘Hey look guys. We are taking land from the private sector – sometimes buying it from foreigners – and giving it back to the state.’ That has a tendency to quell a lot of waters.”

While Tompkins was brutally critical of his home country in many respects, he was a staunch defender of its conservation ethic. “Despite my great disappointment in American foreign policy I am very proud of the American tradition of wild land conservation,” he said. “It is the best tradition and example of land conservation in the world. It goes back a long way. Every single national park had some component of private philanthropy.”

