Ted Turner is the founder of CNN. (I think I knew that...)
Ted Turner owns fifteen ranches in seven states. (Didn't know that!) And those ranches are one of the largest producers of bison meat for the retail market. That may be because he has 55,000 head of buffalo. He also created Ted's Montana Grill, a chain of bison steakhouses.
Ol' Ted has made a deal with Yellowstone. Seems the Yellowstone buffalo are the only genetically pure ones left. (I guess all the others have been cross bred with cows.) The deal is, eighty-eight disease free Yellowstone buffalo have been moved to Ted Turner's Montana Flying D Ranch. He'll keep them for five years, then return them and 25% of their offspring to Yellowstone. (That means he probably gets to keep 185.) The plan is to see if they can stay disease free, and the long-range plan is to see if the "overflow" Yellowstone bison can be carted off to public and tribal land to repopulate free-range style.
In 1902 the Yellowstone herd numbered about fifty. That herd is now at about 4,500, and has been doing so well that Park officials had to kill 1,400 back in 2008 alone. (I wonder. Did they do that with a bow and arrow? )
Brucellosis is the disease that concerns ranchers, and the Yellowstone herd was the last to get that disease. It spreads pretty easily to cows, and even humans can get it - but it usually just causes high fevers in people. In cattle or bison it cause them to lose babies. Only about 50% of the Yellowstone buffalo has brucellosis - and none of those went to Turner.
Being from Texas, we don't know much about the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) because all of Texas land is still sovereign to the state of Texas. But the BLM is a major presence in most states. Out West, the BLM leases a lot of public range land to ranchers for grazing their cattle on. If the Federal government now starts putting buffalo out there to compete with the cattle for grass, is that fair to the ranchers payin' for grazing rights? And since the buffalo are supposed to range free, what's to keep them from having a temper tantrum on a rancher or his cattle? or breeding with his cattle?
Questions. Always with the questions. But, what I didn't know was that Ted Turner of CNN fame is makin' deals with the Feds... And I wonder what kind of tax breaks he gets for having those ranches?
Aw, now. You're gettin' political. Better back it down.
Maybe.
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