In area, Turner’s portfolio of land covers 3,125 square miles, spread across those fifteen ranches, five plantations in the Deep South, a coastal barrier island, a trio of estancias in Argentina’s Patagonia, a scattering of residential retreats, and an office building crowned by a penthouse in the heart of downtown Atlanta. In the latter, on Luckie Street, a Ted’s Montana Grill restaurant takes up the ground floor with solar panels over the parking lots.
Were Turner’s puzzle pieces assembled and placed in a single linear strip of real estate one mile wide, they would span the entire continental United States west to east. If the strip were a quarter of a mile wide, it would be longer than the Great Wall of China; if it were one-eighth of a mile across, the thickness of two city blocks, it would wrap around the Earth.
“What you have to understand about Ted is that many of his endeavors back in Atlanta are examples of him thinking with his head,” Waddell tells me. “Out here, in the West, these are examples of him thinking and acting with his heart.”
In 1992, Turner and Fonda were entertaining the possible purchase of the historic Gray Ranch. They contacted Dobrott because he had helped to caretake the spread for seven years prior to joining the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a wild quail expert. After Turner passed on buying the Gray, the Ladder came on his radar screen and he enlisted Dobrott, along with Miller and Ward, to inspect it for him.
“The Ladder is, per acre, the finest example of wildlife diversity left in the state. I did not recognize this when I first came to the ranch, but I did discover that this property was a wildlife biologist’s dream world,” he says.
Dobrott offered an enthusiastic report on the Ladder to Turner and Fonda. Shortly thereafter, he was offered the manager’s post. After the purchase was finalized, the couple arrived to inspect the property. The next morning, before sunup, Turner eagerly arrived on Dobrott’s doorstep, telling him to put on his hiking boots and take along a pad of paper. It was time for a trek.
His new boss, Dobrott says, had an agenda for how they were going to make the place better than they found it and heal the rolling grasslands of decades of abuse attributed to overgrazing by cattle. They high-tailed with Turner in the lead, straight up a perilous slope of cracked volcanic rock to reach a ridgeline overlook with a five-hundred-foot lethal drop-off on the side.
“I dutifully followed, taking notes along the way,” Dobrott says. “After quite a hike filled with multiple ‘yes sirs,’ we came to a sudden halt. Ted abruptly realized, after enthusiastically gesticulating, that he had led us to the edge of a cliff.”
Perched above a chasm, Turner smiled at Dobrott, admired the beauty, and then said, “Oh, maybe you had better lead from here.”
“Years later, I thought about how metaphoric the incident was,” Dobrott explained to me.
“In his wisdom, Ted leads us all to a precipice of unimaginable responsibility, and then hands over the reins to his caretakers to go forth and fulfill his vision for each property. He knows where he needs to go and he enlists others to accompany him there. It’s the same with us as it is with Tim Wirth at the UN Foundation, Mike Finley with the Turner Foundation, and Sam Nunn at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.”
Dobrott notes that Turner has amazing recall. His daily life inundates him with financial numbers and statistics relating to his investments, considering proposals for erecting alternative energy arrays, scenarios involving nuclear arsenals, global population trajectories, the number of humans residing in poverty, and the profit-loss statements at his restaurants.
“But out of the blue he will remember down to a specific property how much gas is being used in the vehicles and its corresponding carbon output, the number of bison cows and calves on the ranch, the going rate for bison on the market, and the names of ranch hands,” Dobrott says. “Very often, he asks questions that he already knows the answer to.”
He pauses, then adds, “He can be hard, kind of obstreperous at times. He has a big ego in that he’s proud of his accomplishments, but he isn’t threatened by people who know more about subjects than he does. He is a listener, and osmosis is how he learns. Working for Ted, it’s not the potential fall that will kill you. It’s the personal disappointment of feeling sometimes like you’ve failed him that hurts. Loyalty develops when people like him believe in you. I don’t mean to get too flowery, but he inspires all of us by showing us a view of endless possible horizons, then allows you the freedom to reach a greater height than you thought possible.”
Very often, he adds, they also stumble upon startling surprises.
After Turner acquired Vermejo Park Ranch, counted among his new assets was a small and somewhat scraggly herd of bison that inhabited upper-elevation meadows near a geological formation called Castle Rock.
Miller thought those bison, because of their smaller size and unknown health, were expendable, and could be supplanted by bison from other Turner ranches. He consulted Brian Ward, and a recommendation was forwarded to Turner to sell them or turn them into steaks. Miller admits his mistake now: “Ted’s response was, ‘No, let’s keep them.’ He wanted us to hold tight and do a little more investigation.”
Geneticists at Texas A&M University went to work tracing the Castle Rock herd’s provenance. The trail led back to, of all places, Yellowstone National Park. These animals turned out to be possibly just one of five genetically pure herds remaining in the world. If that sounds strange, it isn’t.
At the end of the nineteenth century, after thirty-five million wild bison had been reduced to hundreds in all of the West and Canada, the few that remained were often rounded up, sometimes by conservation pioneers, and sometimes to experiment in cross-breeding them with cattle. Recognizing the bison’s attributes, the intent was to try and produce hardier beef cows. Although some cross-breeding was successful, development of “upgraded” cattle was not, and the experiments were abandoned.
Unfortunately, genetic markers from those experiments have survived through successive generations of bison, which even though they look and act like bison, may still carry a mitochondrial DNA marker in their genetic makeup. Texas A&M estimates that 6 percent of the bison today have evidence of cattle genetics from generations past. A few small populations of wild bison were never subjected to experimentation. One of the relicts is the Yellowstone population, another is a herd in Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota, a third is the Henry Mountain herd in Utah, and a fourth inhabits Elk Island in Canada. The fifth and final belongs to Turner. His Castle Rock herd, which numbers over one thousand head, represents the only private, genetically “pure” conservation herd in North America.
At significant cost and with substantial effort, Turner has been reducing the small number of bison with cattle DNA—presently estimated at 4 percent of the animals—in his production herd. In addition to using Castle Rock animals for breeding stock on his production ranches, he has screened all animals placed into breeding on the ranches. Any that indicate cattle genetics are sold.
It’s all part of a larger plan, a larger vision, that Turner has for his bison herd. A vision that is idealistic at its roots has been tempered, over time, by the hard truths of the market and modern ecology. Turner has spent more than $300,000 over the years on genetic testing and research. Granted, it is not something that an average “family” rancher could afford, but he says he is applying his largesse to try and do what’s best for the species. He’s made the results available to other bison ranchers. “He has provided a great baseline for examining bison genetics,” says Dave Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association. “If Ted didn’t do it, it probably wouldn’t get done.”
Make no mistake, Turner is interested in bison today for more than their existential value. Just as they represented a plentiful commissary for native people, he believes they can be sustenance for twenty-first-century Americans and give them a deeper philosophical understanding of fo
od. In recent consecutive summers, Turner hosted both the Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey shows at his ranches in Montana. One of his purposes was to talk about the health benefits of bison. Over a couple of afternoons, in the company of those influential media women, he reached tens of millions of afternoon viewers wondering what they were going to feed their family for dinner. Many promptly went out and bought bison. Indeed, consumption of bison has been on the rise.
But now it’s months later and the middle of winter. Turner is on an inspection of the meat processing plant that handles his bison after they come off his ranches, bound for supermarkets and featured menu items at Turner’s restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill.
Turner joins a single-file line of men in denim who have donned long white laboratory frocks and beauty parlor hairnets for a tour of Rocky Mountain Natural Meats in suburban Denver. The facility was founded by a New Jersey cowboy named Bob Dineen.
At the front, behind Dineen, Turner wears his hairnet like a beret as he leads ranch hands on a guided tour.
He believes it is important that his field personnel and staff from Turner Enterprises in Atlanta understand how the flow of bison to the marketplace works. Front and center are members of his executive team: the CEO of Turner Enterprises Taylor Glover, Glover’s finance director David Withers, Turner’s son-in-law and attorney Rutherford Seydel, and George McKerrow, who presides over the restaurants.
The rooms are bright white with long stainless steel tables—sterile and antiseptic. Turner is pleased that the ideals of health he demands of his ranch managers and stewarding of land are transmitted to the handling and packaging of bison all the way up the food chain. “Most Americans haven’t a clue how their food is grown and the route it takes to the neighborhood grocer,” Turner says. “This is an important stage.”
Every January at the same time that the American cattle industry gathers for the Western Stock Show in Denver, the National Bison Association and Turner Enterprises also converge on the Mile High City for winter meetings. It’s an opportunity to exchange notes, go over budgets for the year, and to keep everyone informed of the novel projects being carried out in the western empire. The topics listed on the agenda are wide ranging and progressive. It has included assessments of how much fossil fuel is spent, how much carbon dioxide is being sequestered in healthy grasslands and forests, how to reduce stress on the animals, how to manage them in ways that keep family units together and more closely mimic wild herds, and examinations of how bison cope with the presence of predators.
Turner has said on countless occasions that he doesn’t enjoy the idea of his bison having to die. He has often bottle-fed orphaned bison calves. “My involvement with bison has been an education,” Turner says. “If you had asked me twenty years ago how a hamburger moves from grass to grocery, I didn’t have the knowledge to speak authoritatively on it. But I do today. I read Upton Sinclair’s novel about the slaughterhouses of Chicago and it turned my stomach. This is as different from that as the other side of the Moon. I’m not trying to castigate the beef industry. What I am saying is that I’m impressed at all of the measures that are taken by our ranch hands on up to Bob [Dineen at Rocky Mountain Natural Meats] and then to George [McKerrow, operating executive of Ted’s Montana Grill] to ensure safety, quality, and humane and respectful handling of the bison.”
Temple Grandin, the doctor of animal science, has gained international renown for her work with animals, namely for delving into their thinking and emotional capacity as sentient creatures. She wrote a book, Animals in Transition, which explored her personal challenges with autism and her therapeutic work as an animal behaviorist and professor at the University of Colorado. And there was an HBO biopic made about her starring actress Claire Danes. Grandin has served as a consultant to the beef industry and has advised McDonald’s and such green-minded grocery chains as Whole Foods, which carries bison meat coming off of Turner ranches.
In 2009, she and Catherine Johnson wrote a well-received book titled Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. Grandin recounts a reconnaissance inspection she took on behalf of Whole Foods to assess the treatment of animals at an unnamed ranching operation that was to become a potential provider of grass-fed meat.
“I was out on a large bison ranch recently and was very pleased with the handling,” she wrote. “Why do they have good handling? Because the boss wants it that way. It’s coming down from the top. I have seen this pattern many times. Even back in the bad old days before major customers started doing animal welfare audits of the meat plants, there were always some places that did things right. Every one of these plants or farms had a strong manager who served as the conscience for the employees. Many times I heard employees stop another employee from hurting an animal by saying, ‘You can’t do that. The boss doesn’t allow it.’”
By “boss,” Grandin was referring to Turner. She adheres to the principle that landowners are ethically bound to give animals “a life worth living” and Turner, she said, illustrates it. Turner’s occasional macho displays aside, his gentle manner around bison, his horses, and the wildlife that share the range with them has rubbed off, infused in his employees.
“We aren’t doing what Ted wants only because he is our boss,” Miller says. “We do it because he opens our eyes to a better way of seeing things.”
Still, Turner struggles with the reality that his bison die to become food on the table. It continues to be difficult for him. When the animals reach Dineen’s processing plant, the hides already have been removed, the masses of flesh chilled, cleaned, rinsed, halved, and readied to be turned into choice steaks, roasts, and premium quality hamburger.
Turner always has questions to ask. He stops to chat with Dineen’s workers, butchers artfully and efficiently cutting meat, then packaging the cuts and getting them into walk-in coolers to ensure freshness. Safety is a two-fold endeavor involving sanitary handling of the meat in its conversion from being on the hoof to arriving on dinner plates, and in the care given to prevent job-related accidents and injuries that can range from getting cut, slipping on the floor, and throwing out a back to repetitive stress ailments related to meat handling.
Dineen has addressed the former by working with engineers who design state of the art facilities to streamline the flow of bison from the door where it enters the plant to cold storage where it awaits shipping. Unlike the negative stereotype that is sometimes applied to meat plants, Rocky Mountain Natural Meats does not require workers to sumo wrestle with sides of animals through zones of swirling knives and slick floors.
In another room away from the packaging side of the operation, Brian Ward’s son, Ty, an employee of Dineen’s, is working the phones like a Wall Street stockbroker. Demand for bison has skyrocketed. This is one of the nerve centers for the American bison industry. It’s less about frenetic wheeling and dealing than in coordinating supply with grocers and restaurants, the largest buyer being Turner’s restaurant chain. Some of the familiar outlets across the country are A&P, Albertson’s, Fry’s, Hannaford, Kroger, King Soopers, Market Basket, Safeway, Shaw’s Shop Rite, Smith’s, Stop & Shop, Waldbaum’s, Wegmans, and Whole Foods.
“Our goal is not to maximize volume for volume’s sake. It is to attain an equilibrium by anticipating demand and matching it with bringing animals off the range. Freshness equates to quality,” Dineen says. “If we wanted to be a big player in the American meat industry, we would have built a plant five times as large and our focus would be cattle and hogs and we’d be positioned on the edge of a feedlot.”
Operating at scale enables Turner to reduce expenses and enables the cost of bison reaching consumers to be more affordable. Such “vertical integration,” which eliminates needless market middlemen, has also enabled Turner and his associates to have a clear-eyed, holistic view of what it takes to grow healthy bison herds on healthy landscapes, and to ensure that the product delivered to cons
umers maintains its health benefits. He believes society deserves to have a peace of mind in knowing how and where food is produced, rather than having it be shrouded in mystery.
Dr. David Hunter, Turner’s valued on-staff wildlife veterinarian, has traveled around the world to advance his understanding of an emerging science called “conservation medicine” that focuses on preventing the spread of zoonotic diseases. Based upon recommendations from Hunter, the Turner management protocol ensures that bison have plenty of room to fan across the landscape, to have an abundance of natural plants and minerals—rather than stuffing them with hay in winter—to feast upon, and are not injected with antibiotics and growth hormones, a practice that is prolific in domestic livestock ranching.
Miller says that Turner could capitalize on demand by flooding his ranches with a lot more bison, but he is guided by ecology and sound resource management. “He’s never been interested in imposing the cattle model of production on bison, but neither is it just a hobby. Industrial approaches to agriculture often mean that you are working the land hard. He likes to make money, but making money isn’t his only objective.”
About four hundred bison move through Dineen’s plant each week. A big cattle plant would process that many in an hour, he says. About 125 million cattle annually are raised in the United States.
At the western headquarters of Turner Enterprises Inc. in Bozeman, a single-story office warren, Miller and assistant general manager John Hansen are in the conference room with intricate budget sheets fanned across a long table. It’s crunch time for another year. And during this annum, the West is gripped in drought.
Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet Page 6