Those are lessons that are serving well this US multi-millionaire who left behind the world of business -- notably co-founding the North Face and Esprit clothing brands -- to focus on saving the environment.

His latest campaign is in Argentina, where he is duelling against farmers whom he accuses of polluting the nation's vast northern sweet-water marshes in Corrientes province 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 authorities to turn the rich tropical ecosystem into a vast national park of some 13,000 square kilometers.

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 told AFP in an interview.

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

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

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

But he also has his tactics of offense: using his big fortune, amassed from the sale of his clothing brands, to buy up cattle farms where he lets nature and indigenous deer take over; reintroducing marsh deer, anteaters and species that had disappeared; and firing salvos of expensive lawsuits at rice farmers 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 outfit he funds to keep up his fight, has won seven lawsuits 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 urging locals to saddle up their horses to 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.

In pursuit of that goal, he is wily enough to parry forward when conditions are advantageous, and to bide his time when they are not.

"You must be lucky and know how political winds are blowing. Sometimes it's not a time that you want to present a project."

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