At a ceremony on Monday, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet officially declared a major expansion of Chile's parklands, creating two new national parks and protecting vast swaths of the country's rainforests, grasslands, and other wild terrains.

"With these beautiful lands, their forests, their rich ecosystems, we…expand the network of parks to more than 10 million acres," Bachelet said in a statement. "Thus, national parks in Chile will increase by 38.5% to account for 81.1% of Chile’s protected areas.”

The announcement represents a major achievement for public-private conservation. In what's being billed the world’s largest donation of privately held land, American philanthropist Kristine Tompkins—the co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, along with her late husband Doug Tompkins—has handed over slightly more than a million