A generation younger than Turner, Kaplan is confident, soft-spoken, and possesses a similar, golden-boy mystique. He made his fortune based upon an ability to predict the locations of some vast veins of precious minerals. The New Yorker makes no apologies for his shrewd talents as a natural resource capitalist and notes that the proceeds have allowed him to try and do good on behalf of the environment.
Like Turner, his academic pedigree was not forged by pursuing an MBA at a prominent business school and then ascending the corporate ladder. This Oxford-educated liberal arts major studied history in England and wrote his PhD dissertation on a rather arcane subject: the relationship between tin and rubber markets in colonial Malaysia and the role of British politics in influencing the extraction of those raw materials.
Kaplan applied that knowledge and, using geological studies, was instrumental in uncovering some of the largest mineral deposits in South America. Taking his profits, and remembering Turner’s admonishment to plutocrats, he searched for examples. He was intrigued by TESF.
Through Project Orianne, Kaplan tethers his daughter’s name to meaningful conservation. The indigo snake has a wide range and is a voracious forager. It lives in habitats that people want to see preserved. Ninety percent of the habitat being protected for indigo snakes overlaps with the habitat necessary to protect imperiled gopher tortoises; the indigo snake also resides in forests suitable for longleaf pine restoration. It’s the keystone species concept being repeated.
The Turner Endangered Species Fund, too, is studying the correlation between tortoises and snakes, as both species are slated for recovery at Avalon Plantation.
As for his cat work, led by Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, Kaplan would like to move faster with expansion of jaguar range, but he has encountered hurdles, just as Turner’s enthusiasm for restoring gray wolves to the southern Rockies has been tempered by political resistance.
“I am sympathetic to his frustration with the slow pace of getting wolves back on the ground at his ranches in the Southwest,” Kaplan says. “I built my own company on being impulsive, and he epitomizes [that same sensibility] with his record. Both of us believe in rapid decision-making and expect our associates to fall in behind us quickly.”
In private business, he says, one can do that because the owner sets the tone and the agenda. In wildlife conservation, it doesn’t work that way. “Let me correct that,” he says. “It rarely works that way. I assumed at the beginning that everyone in the nongovernmental arena of wildlife conservation was a saint equipped with a halo and wing. I never expected to encounter so much bitchiness and backbiting and competition, detracting from the main objective. There are excellent groups out there, but sometimes the conservation movement is as dysfunctional as government can be. That’s why I moved forward with founding Project Orianne and Panthera.”
In his book Outliers, in which he makes specific reference to Turner, writer Malcolm Gladwell explores the ways that nonlinear experience serves as a presage to the rise of perceived genius. He talks about the importance of repetition—doing things over and over again, at least ten thousand times to lay the groundwork for accelerated mastery. And how collaboration with others is often the essence of great achievement. Two indispensable ingredients are natural talent and raw ambition. Certainly, Turner’s uncanny percipient abilities, namely his knack for creatively marshaling—and leveraging—all available assets—provided fodder for Gladwell’s research.
In another essay for the New Yorker magazine, Gladwell described Turner as fitting the classic profile of an entrepreneurially minded “predator” who is not a free-wheeling risk taker but a man exceptionally capable of assessing risks and perils in the hunt for opportunity. If Gladwell’s analysis is correct, then the very same prowess Turner possesses for making money as a capitalist, he wields as a humanitarian and environmentalist in reading dangers in the road ahead. He is using his shrewd, risk-averse instincts to advise humanity to take a safer course.
Turner’s rise by connecting the world via satellite beams is as unlikely as Kaplan moving from the don track at Oxford to launching a phenomenally successful hedge fund that hit the jackpot with a number of mineral ventures. Both appeared to bet everything they had on ideas that hit pay dirt. But Turner in fact is far more rationally calculating than his former public persona sometimes let on. Kaplan can relate to Turner in the way he applies business sense to saving nature.
“It’s one thing to be the only one out there doing it. It’s another when you inspire others who take what you’ve done and put their own spin on it,” Phillips says. “I think what Mr. Kaplan is doing with Project Orianne and Panthera are hugely laudable efforts and they have the potential to do some real good. As someone who has spent some time around large carnivores, his cat project is most impressive.”
Turner says he is flattered by Kaplan referencing him, and it is clear they share a similar philosophy. They like to act fast, they rue excessive regulation and the slow pace of how governments work, they see advantages in private property, and they believe that meaningful conservation will only persist if it has an underpinning of economic sustainability. In other words, they don’t want to whimsically throw money at a problem. And they want their efforts to continue to produce dividends beyond their lifetimes. What Kaplan found attractive about the way Turner works is that Turner indulges his own intellectual curiosity by approaching philanthropy from a number of different angles, including finding top people in their fields to collaborate with. It was a style that spoke strongly to Kaplan’s own humanities-style of learning—bringing together ideas across a variety of academic disciplines—that he had developed at Oxford.
“Looking at his work from a macro standpoint, I think it is one of the great inspirations in philanthropy,” he says of Turner. “Although we may have some political disagreements, I think we are kindred in our intentions.”
Pausing, Kaplan adds: “Turner’s statements have sometimes seemed over the top. But whether you believe in an afterlife or not, he should be judged on his actions. If it were up to me, he’s going to heaven. His proactive stands have made him an iconoclast, but an iconoclast worth emulating.”
The recent book Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Tradition is a magnificent coffee table tome by Tom Butler that pays homage to eco-philanthropists mostly of the past, many of whom used their fortunes to protect land that, in many instances, was committed to public ownership.
The cost of the book was underwritten by Doug and Kris Tompkins, former outdoor clothing company executives who have set aside an unprecedented preserve in the Patagonian region of Chile. Their place is not far from Turner’s estancias in Argentina. A sweet little foreword is offered by Tom Brokaw, who knows not only Turner and the Tompkinses but also Yvon Chouinard, founder of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, a benefactor to conservation and promoter of One Percent for the Planet.
All are varying examples of a new era of eco-capitalists who are using their money to be more supportive of nature conservation. There is a passage in Brokaw’s essay that most certainly is a direct reference to Turner. “I detect among my friends a growing consciousness to treat the land as they would a piece of rare art. That is, something not just to be collected but to be conserved and shared in its original, undiminished state. The rewards go well beyond whatever tax benefits are to be realized. A protected piece of nature is a legacy of deeply satisfying proportions.”
Back, then, to prairie dogs. Turner says that environmentalism in the twenty-first century must necessarily be about overcoming long-held biases that created an adversarial relationship between humans and the land. Prairie dogs are a testament to the gulf that exists between cultural mythology and scientific knowledge. It “astounds him” to think how close an enlightened culture came to erasing a linchpin of prairie ecology without realizing the grave mistake it was making.
Dr. John Hoogland, known colloquially arou
nd the world as “Mr. Prairie Dog,” and whose work was the subject of a documentary film made by Turner Broadcasting System, has devoted four decades to researching the much maligned animals. Only at the end of the twentieth century did science begin to achieve traction in reversing the hatred toward prairie dogs that had similarly permeated attitudes toward wolves, grizzly bears, sharks, and big cats around the world.
“Turner’s been a quiet prairie dog ambassador but his impact has been gargantuan,” Hoogland says. “If nothing else, his interest causes other influential people to pay attention.”
The plight of prairie dogs can be extrapolated to other species, and they badly need a champion beyond biologists and environmental groups, says Hoogland. “With bison, he’s gone off the grid of the beef industry. And he’s been able to show that the same private property rights argument used to subdue nature can be leveraged in reverse to pursue biologically informed management.” Hoogland praises the good work of nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations like The Nature Conservancy, which has helped restore prairie dogs on its own system of reserves, but Turner’s work with TESF, and as a private individual, makes him unique.
A fascinating but obscure book, edited by Hoogland, Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog: Saving North America’s Western Grasslands, influenced Turner. Researchers Natasha Kotliar, Brian Miller, Richard Reading, and Susan Clark share Turner’s observation of the prairie dogs’ keystone role. “Some species sporadically and opportunistically capitalize on the benefits provided by prairie dog colony-sites, whereas others have stronger associations,” they write. “Several species that associate closely with colony-sites are endangered or declining, so that a continued decline in prairie dog numbers might further imperil [them].”
There are a number of animals known to either depend on prairie dog colonies or closely associate with them. The first is the American bison, itself a keystone. Bison and prairie dogs evolved together on the short and mixed-grass prairie. Bison keep the grass lower and the habits of prairie dogs nurtured the kinds of nutritious grasses that bison liked to eat. Bison found prairie dog colonies attractive venues in which to wallow, rubbing off their wooly winter hair and covering themselves with dust to repel biting insects. In turn, the brutes left behind dung that fertilized the soil, churned by millions of sharp hooves tromping over it. Other species associated with prairie dog colonies include pronghorn (antelope), golden eagle, American kestrel, chestnut-collared longspur, ferruginous hawk, American badger, black-tailed jackrabbit, horned lark, killdeer, coyote, deer mouse, eastern cottontail, northern grasshopper mouse, striped skunk, thirteen-lined ground squirrel, white-tailed deer, eastern meadowlark, western meadowlark, horned lark, Texas horned lizard, ornate box turtle, prairie rattlesnake, western diamondback rattlesnake, western plains garter snake, Great Plains toad, tiger salamander, plains spadefoot toad, and Woodhouse’s toad.
Mirroring the panoply of species that converge at water holes during the dry season in Africa, prairie dog colonies play the role of eco-centers. The dens of prairie dogs serve as burrows for other species. The way vegetation is pruned and foraged upon by prairie dogs yields a nutritious smorgasbord garden that is attractive to other grazers (including cattle). The engineering of dens leads to more water being trapped in the soil. And the short and mixed-grass prairie where prairie dogs establish settlements attracts predators and prey.
Phillips says that natural adaptation and survival of the fittest, when played out over millennia, create animals that are suitable for their setting. For bison and pronghorn to persist over thousands of years, they had to have a way to outwit predators. They also had to endure harsh prairie conditions—periods of extreme cold and heat, variations in rainfall, and both finding adequate nutrition in plants and, by their habits, creating the natural salad bar.
There are three additional species associated with bison and prairie dog ecosystems—black-footed ferret, mountain plover, and burrowing owl. The fates of these species have tracked closely to prairie dogs. All three, plus the swift fox, have been beneficiaries of TESF. Climate change, Turner says, could radically alter the ability of landscapes to support species, making large chunks of secure habitat ever more valuable in the decades to come. His commitment to saving the black-footed ferret, Phillips says, serves as a classic case study.
Within the lexicon of imperiled species conservation, there is a phenomenon known as “The Lazarus Syndrome.” It applies to species written off as extinct but then rediscovered. By the late 1970s, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, following years of fruitless searching to find just one animal, was preparing to formally declare the black-footed ferret an extinct species, joining company with the passenger pigeon, the ivory-billed woodpecker, and the dodo.
“Ferrets vanished primarily because of one singular factor: the persecution and rapid disappearance of black-tailed prairie dogs,” Phillips says. “Prairie dogs are what ferrets eat. The loss of one causing the loss of the other is a perfect cause and effect relationship.”
By grace of miracle, Wyoming earned a place on the Lazarus map, for it was in the badlands near Meeteetse that a remnant black-footed ferret was spotted by accident on September 26, 1981. As the tale goes, ranchers John and Lucille Hogg found a dead mink-like animal near the dog food dish of their blue heeler, Shep, who had killed it. Upon closer inspection by a taxidermist, the carcass was positively identified as a black-footed ferret. Researchers turned up more ferrets and suddenly the species had risen from the dead.
Over the last three decades, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, along with other state, federal, and private partners, has done heroic work to get ferrets removed from life support. The goal is to have fifteen hundred ferrets back on the ground in ten or more free-ranging separate populations. The challenge is finding enough suitable prairie dog colonies where ferrets can be transplanted with modest expectations of survival.
Ferrets, too, have complex interactions with each other and they, like prairie dogs, are highly susceptible to sylvatic plague. It is the wildlife equivalent of bubonic plague, which left millions of humans dead during the Dark Ages. And while bubonic plague can be cured if diagnosed and treated early enough in humans, sylvatic plague is a death sentence for prairie dogs and ferrets.
Establishing ten different ferret populations is dependent upon having ten large self-sustaining prairie dog colonies. To decrease their vulnerability to a catastrophic disease outbreak, the Fish and Wildlife Service wants them to exist in geographical separation.
That’s where TESF comes in. Turner has voluntarily offered to let two or more of his ranches with prairie dog colonies serve as ferret-release sites. At Vermejo Park Ranch, TESF’s Dustin Long also has worked closely with the Fish and Wildlife Service to propagate ferrets at a captive breeding facility. In essence, Turner is not only offering ferrets a safe haven but also he is using the ranches to serve as a platform to assist the federal government and ultimately restore ferrets so they can be removed from the Endangered Species list.
“I know that when Ted Turner first said in print that prairie dogs were going to share the range with his bison, some considered it heresy. In fact, if you can believe this, it has practically been illegal in some states, because of laws passed by legislatures, to move ahead with protecting prairie dogs on one’s own land,” Hoogland says.
“Prairie dogs, which are mentioned in Lewis and Clark’s journals, haven’t enjoyed wildlife status, yet they are one of the most important prairie animal there is. They’ve been grouped within the same category of rats, locusts, and mosquitoes. That’s how deeply engrained the cultural bias against them has been.”
Turner knows his ranch managers are in a tough spot when they go into nearby towns for supplies and interact with locals who still believe the only good use of prairie dogs is as target practice for sighting in hunting rifles. Some of those who partake in shooting prairie dogs for sport refer to them collo
quially as “pink mist,” which is what happens to them when they are struck by a rifle bullet.
“Ninety percent of ranchers in the West will tell you they hate prairie dogs,” Hoogland says. “The two most common justifications they invoke are that prairie dogs compete with their livestock for forage, which is partially true, and that cows break their legs when they step into the holes of prairie dog dens, which is a tall tale based on Spartan anecdotal information and is, in fact, very, very uncommon.”
He adds, “Ranchers Smith, Jones, and Nelson will tell you that prairie dogs are a scourge because that’s what their daddies told them, and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers before them. It is a perception that got formed and reinforced over 150 years. Old beliefs die hard, even when they are misinformed. I don’t expect that we’ll see a major sea change in attitude over the next ten years but a more enlightened understanding is slowly taking hold.”
He notes that while prairie dog colonies can reduce the amount of forage available to cattle, studies show that cattle, like bison historically, actually are attracted to forage around colonies at certain times of year, especially spring green-up. Plants there are not only nutritious and tasty, they are available to cattle earlier.
“When Ted speaks of prairie dogs’ right to exist and points out their value, some call it blasphemy,” Hoogland adds. “But you know what? Ted Turner is right in looking past that, and he has a lot of courage.”
Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet Page 30