KEY POINTS:
Ted Turner gave the world CNN, but the legacy he intends to leave America is not the incessant drumbeat of television news, but millions of hectares of wide-open spaces teeming with wildlife and endangered species.
Today, he is America's biggest conservationist as well as its largest private landowner. Like many American outdoorsmen he is both a committed hunter and environmentalist, except that he has managed to turn his passion into a profit-making business.
Over the past few years, Ted Turner has used his US$2.3 billion ($3 billion) wealth to create wildlife sanctuaries across many of the 810,370ha he owns in 12 states as well as in the southern tip of the Americas, Patagonia.
His mostly western lands are filled with bison, native cut-throat trout and cougars in habitat that he manages in an environmentally sensitive way. Hunters and fishermen pay big fees to bag elk, deer and catch and release rare species of trout, which he has brought back from the brink of extinction. His Nebraska ranches are home to America's largest herd of buffalo, some 50,000 strong, which supply his restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill, with bison burgers.
The Turner land grab has, however, generated suspicion among ranchers who are complaining that this is another land grab by a rich liberal environmentalist, which is putting them out of business.
But Turner, who has given more than US$1.5 billion to charity, says he is more than a philanthropist, and tries to make money from all his ventures. The Turner organisation is now in discussions with the World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union about developing a park where bison could once again roam the Great Plains freely.
- Independent
