09/09/2026
In 1989, media mogul Ted Turner made a decision that puzzled many of his neighbors in southwest Montana. Rather than running cattle like the ranchers around him, Turner purchased the sprawling 113,613-acre Flying D Ranch, nestled between the Gallatin and Madison Rivers beneath the Rocky Mountains, with an entirely different vision in mind. His goal was ambitious: restore the land to resemble what it looked like roughly 150 years earlier, long before fences, roads, and cattle reshaped the American West. Turner and his team got to work removing nearly every trace of human development, tearing down power lines, old structures, and hundreds of miles of barbed wire fencing that had crisscrossed the property for generations. In place of cattle, he introduced bison, an animal whose population had once numbered in the tens of millions before being driven to near extinction in the late 1800s. Over the following decades, Turner's bison herd on the Flying D grew into one of the largest private herds in North America, with roughly 4,500 bison now roaming freely across the property's grasslands and river valleys. Turner went on to apply this same restoration philosophy across additional properties throughout the American West, eventually helping rebuild a combined herd representing a meaningful share of the continent's entire bison population. When Turner passed away in 2026 at the age of 87, he left behind more than just vast acres of preserved land. He left a living example of how private conservation, paired with genuine commitment, can help undo more than a century of ecological damage, one restored landscape at a time.
