Brief by Central Staff
Land Use – June 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Billionaire media mogul Ted Turner faces a dilemma that many of us might enjoy: picking among money-making ventures.
Among Turner’s holdings are some large ranches in the West; his largest is the 588,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch. It spreads west from Raton, N.M., and part of it extends north into Colorado on the east side of the San Luis Valley.
Turner, a prominent conservationist, bought the ranch in 1996, and immediately ripped out miles of fence to restore the land to “what the West was before we altered it almost beyond recognition.”
He raises bison there, and hunters pay good money — up to $13,000 for a guided six-day trip — to kill elk in season. So the Vermejo Park surface is both scenic and productive.
Beneath the ranch, however, is an immense reserve of natural gas, owned by the El Paso Corp. of Houston, Texas. Pump jacks dot the landscape, but they’re quiet and camouflaged.
So far, both uses have co-existed. But with natural-gas prices at record levels, El Paso wants to increase production. While that would bring in more revenue to the ranch (it currently collects about $6.5 million a year in gas royalties), more wells could make the place less attractive to big-ticket hunters.
One local hunting guide put it this way: “I’ve watched the transition from a wild landscape to an industrialized zone. When you are chasing wild game, you expect it to be in a wild landscape.”
Oh well, if you have to have problems, this would be a good one to have.