The Land Report

Summer 2017

The Magazine of the American Landowner is an essential guide for investors, landowners, and those interested in buying or selling land. The award-winning quarterly is known for its annual survey of America's largest landowners, The Land Report 100.

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88 The LandReport | S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 LANDREPORT.COM T his duality – creating a profitable financial model on his lands while preserving and enhancing their many varied habitats – plumbs the essence of our 2017 Legacy Landowner. "It is taut and tight, and it is all Ted Turner," says Mark Kossler, the general manager of Turner Ranches. "In some circles, Ted is known as a hardball businessman. He knows how to make money. He knows how to run profitable businesses, and he can be tough to deal with in a business environment. Fair, but tough. On the other hand, he is known as a conservationist who takes conservation very seriously, and he wants to manage his properties and have other properties he manages conserve species. So that mission statement is all Ted Turner." This challenging mission statement highlights Turner's unique capacity – to use Mike Phillips's insight – to drive to the most important common denominator. "When I managed Vermejo Park and the Flying D for Ted, I always had the view that first and foremost, Turner Ranches was in the grass business. It's been three years since I took over for Russ Miller and now oversee all the ranches. And I've been overlaying that philosophy on all of our ranches. Everybody wants to talk bison. Bison are sexy. They're in vogue. But bison are really a means to take our grass crop and market it or monetize it. Let's broaden that out a little bit. It's not grass we're monetizing. It's habitat. How we manage these properties makes the habitat on them, the forage, and the soils underneath the forage either more vibrant, more re- silient, and more diverse, or less. That is the basis of our management of Turner Ranches. We do spend a lot of time talking about bison and bison production, but at the core of what we do, it's really all about the habitat," Kossler says. THIS PAGE: Balancing conservation and commerce has been a hallmark of the visionary landowner. OPPOSITE PAGE: Turner created his own restaurant collection to better utilize and promote the bison. TURNER RANCHES

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