BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhuanet) -- The American multimillionaire who founded the North Face and Esprit clothing lines says he is trying to save the planet by buying bits of it. First Douglas Tompkins purchased a huge swath of southern Chile, and now he's hoping to save the northeast wetlands of neighboring Argentina.

    He has purchased more than half a million acres of the Esteros del Ibera, a vast Argentine marshland swarming with wildlife. Tompkins, 64, is a hero to some for his environmental stewardship. Others resent his land purchases as a foreign challenge to their national patrimony.

    "Everywhere I look here in Argentina I see massive abuse of the soil ... just like what happened in the U.S. 20 or 30 years ago," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

    Tompkins hopes to do in Argentina what he did in Chile ¡ª create broad stretches of land protected from agribusiness or industrial development, and one day turn them over to the government as nature reserves.

    At first, Argentine officials eagerly courted Tompkins' philanthropy, flying him to several areas of ecological significance in the late 1990s ¡ª when the government was hard up for cash because of the economic crisis.

    He bought a 120,000-acre ranch in 1998 and has increased his Argentine holdings to nearly 600,000 acres since then. He now owns well over 1 million acres in Chile and Argentina, a combined area about the size of Rhode Island.

    Critics now are accusing Tompkins of seeking to control one of South America's biggest fresh water reserves, and worrying that he might never cede the lands to the state.

    "These lands should not belong to an individual, much less a foreigner," said Luis D'Elia, who argues the American could gain "control of resources that are going to be scarce in the future, like water."

    Opposition lawmakers in both countries have sought unsuccessfully to expropriate Tompkins' purchases or put limits on extremely large landholdings. Tompkins shrugs off the protests.

    "If you had to go to bed every night thinking about every accusation that would come up the next day, you'd be consumed," he said. "Some of that stuff is laughable. ... You've just got to live with that and focus on the things you're doing."

    (Agencies)