Santa Fe New Mexican
May 23, 2015
By Margaret Wright
Saving wildlife costs a pretty penny, especially when the efforts are spread across 2 million acres that constitute the largest private property holdings in New Mexico.
Hundreds of animal species, including several dwindling ones, find protection and free range on billionaire Ted Turner’s vast Northern New Mexico Vermejo Park Ranch, as well as his Ladder and Armendaris ranches hundreds of miles to the south.
Desert bighorn sheep, which not long ago teetered toward extinction, have grown in number from 30 to more than 250 on the high desert grasslands of Turner’s southern properties. Tens of thousands of bison roam, along with pronghorn and elk, mountain lions and oryx. To the consternation of many neighboring cattle ranchers, a small population of endangered Mexican gray wolves are maintained on Ladder Ranch land for eventual restoration to the wild, though earlier this month the state Department of Game and Fish denied the operation’s permit to provide pen space for the animals.
Described on the book jacket of his biography Last Stand as a pioneering eco-capitalist, Turner now plans to keep his working ranches and animal preserves operating at a profit through the establishment of a fullscale (and upscale) ecotourism business.
The profitability of Turner’s working ranches directly benefits their ecological work, said Mike Phillips, an ecologist who directs the Turner Endangered Species Fund and its Turner Biodiversity Divisions.
