Big Bucks, Big Dreams

Few people are working harder to meet the challenge of finding a new way to ranch than billionaire media baron Ted Turner.

During the last decade, he has acquired 11 ranches, encompassing well over a million acres, in Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico.

Stretching east from the Continental Divide to the edge of the White Sands Missile Range, his two southern New Mexico ranches, the Ladder and the Armendaris, account for more than 500,000 acres.

Like the environmentalists whom Turner supports financially, he hopes to reestablish wildlife that once flourished in the desert Southwest.

He has populated the Ladder and the Armendaris with antelope, desert bighorn sheep and black-tailed prairie dogs, and he has plans to bring in rare black-footed ferrets, condors, falcons and whooping cranes.

Turner is also participating in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s captive breeding program, raising Mexican gray wolves on the Ladder Ranch for release elsewhere in the wilds.

But beyond the occasional wolf howl, there is not a great deal of resemblance to pristine wilderness on these holdings.

Turner is a hunter who has stocked his ranches with several species of game birds. He has also brought in several thousand bison, taking advantage of an international market for buffalo meat, which commands a significantly higher price per pound than cattle.

The ranches are honeycombed with hundreds of miles of roads and water lines to supply the wildlife. There are dozens of ponds, bird feeders with electronically timed release mechanisms and “drinkers” built with ramps so that wild animals--which often drown in conventional stock tanks--can climb back out.

“Obviously, we think it’s a good idea to give nature a helping hand,” said Tom Waddell, manager of the Armendaris.

In keeping with a Turner mandate not to harm any non-game wildlife, even rattlesnakes, ranch hands have been trying to figure out how to deter mountain lions from feasting on a herd of endangered bighorn sheep.

It cost the Armendaris $50,000 to reintroduce the sheep last year, Waddell said, and most of the newborns have already been killed by mountain lions.

Lately, Turner’s staff of wildlife experts has been splashing lion urine--procured from an Albuquerque zoo--on the ground, hoping to mark territory the way big cats do to ward off rivals. Results aren’t in yet.

Although Turner’s style of ranching may be an inspiration, it’s not an example many ranchers can afford to follow.

According to Waddell, the Armendaris spends up to $1 million on annual operating expenses, most of it related to conservation and wildlife. The ranch recoups less than half of that from the sale of bison, the only significant source of income.

“Because of Ted’s wherewithal, we’re in a unique position to do some good out here,” Waddell said. “You hope others will follow suit, but obviously it’s going to be a stretch for the average rancher.”