Over the course of his long life, media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner bought vast stretches of land in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and Nebraska and managed them for conservation. That work is expected to continue, even after Turner’s death on May 6 at age 87.

One of the Turner family’s largest properties, the 363,000-acre Armendaris Ranch in south-central New Mexico, is shielded from development by the nation’s second-largest permanent conservation easement. According to a statement on Turner Enterprises’ website, the rest of the roughly 2 million-acre ranchland empire will “continue to be protected, limiting future development and parcellation.”

“Turner Ranches, the Turner Foundation and his other nonprofits intend to do stewardship and restoration on those lands,” said Jonathan Hayden, executive director of New Mexico Land Conservancy, which holds the conservation easement on the Armendaris Ranch. Turner “will be known for being an innovator in the conservation space and being willing to try new things, from reintroducing desert bighorn to bison restoration — things that take a lot of capital and vision.”

Who owns the West?

Turner, who bought his first ranch in 1987, spent the following decades acquiring 12 more in six Western states. He focused on buying properties that were suitable for raising bison, intending to use the animals to restore the land to its original state as well as supply meat for his restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill. By all accounts, his land purchases were about more than easements, a tool some wealthy landowners use to avoid taxes. Turner said publicly and on his website that his properties would continue to pay taxes to contribute to local communities. He also viewed his land as a way to bring back some species that are at-risk in the West and across the nation.

He made headlines with vast properties like the Vermejo Ranch in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, which he bought from the oil company Pennzoil. For years, his ranch managers worked to restore the overgrazed and overused 558,000-acre expanse, ultimately bringing back more than 1,200 bison and reviving riparian areas along 30 miles of streams and more than a dozen lakeshores.

In 1997, Turner created the Turner Endangered Species Fund, which reintroduced Mexican wolves at his Ladder Ranch in New Mexico and black-footed ferrets on the Bad River Ranch in South Dakota as well as on Vermejo. He also brought westslope cutthroat trout to his Flying D Ranch in southwest Montana.

The Armendaris is focused on “sustaining wildlife species in a time of unprecedented drought,” Hayden said. Operators there have restored populations of imperiled desert bighorn sheep, reintroduced the endangered Bolson tortoise and the aplomado falcon, and protected habitat for more than a million seasonal and migratory bats in the famous Jornada Bat Caves.

Turner “will be known for being an innovator in the conservation space and being willing to try new things, from reintroducing desert bighorn to bison restoration — things that take a lot of capital and vision.”

The ranch “was both a keystone project and a catalyst that demonstrates how integral private land conservation can be to preserving broader ecoregions,” Hayden said, noting that other landowners have followed Turner’s lead. Since the completion of the Armendaris easement, the New Mexico Land Conservancy has facilitated two conservation leases totaling 120,000 acres on state public lands and another five on private land.

Ted Turner makes a deal

But Turner’s ranches also concentrated on economic output, raising upward of 45,000 bison, as well as hosting sustainable timber harvest and high-end guided hunting, fishing and ecotourism, according to Turner’s websites. In 2021, he created the Turner Institute of Ecoagriculture with the goal of “conserving ecosystems, agriculture, and rural communities,” especially on his 80,000-acre McGinley Ranch, which straddles the Nebraska-South Dakota border.

“He understood from a practical standpoint that commerce and conservation have to go hand in hand,” said Lesli Alison, CEO of Western Landowners Alliance. “If commerce is pitted against conservation, nature will lose every time.”

This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation and the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation.

The post Ted Turner owned vast swaths of Western land. What happens to them now? appeared first on High Country News.

As the worst snowpack in half a century kindles potential for a devastating wildfire season on Colorado’s 24 million federal acres, Colorado has lost more federal land management workers than any other state.  

A new analysis of federal workforce data by two policy-watchdog groups — Prospect Partners and Hawk Eye Strategies, consulting firms made up of former government employees, including advisors in the Biden administration— shows that Colorado ranks at the top of states for public lands agency job cuts last year. Colorado lost 1,753 positions from agencies including the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management amounting to a 26% loss in the public lands workforce in 2025. 

The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts of nearly 300,000 federal jobs by the Department of Government Efficiency included 6,000 public lands jobs at 10 federal agencies in six Western states. 

“We are heading into a summer of heightened risk with unprecedented low federal capacity,” said Bernie Kluger, a coauthor of the analysis with Prospect Partners and a former senior consultant for the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Biden administration, in a statement. “At a moment when federal agencies should be surging in capacity to protect Colorado communities from drought and fire, the Trump administration’s cuts instead eliminated the scientists who forecast the risk of these disasters.”

About 60 Forest Service jobs were cut from the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest, the busiest forest in the country with more than 8 million annual visitors who stir an economic impact of more than $1.6 billion in Colorado’s high country communities.

Scott Fitzwilliams supervised the White River National Forest for 15 years before resigning last year as visitation soared and he was forced to slash his workforce. 

A year later he still can’t make any sense of the cuts. 

“There was no rhyme or reason that I could see. They did not have any kind of strategic approach to the downsizing. If they tell you differently, they are lying,” he said in an interview with The Colorado Sun. “It just seemed random. When you think of the type of visitation we get and the needs of our forests, it’s just disheartening to think about how fewer people are out there doing this critical work.”

More than a third of those job losses in Colorado last year were newly hired or probationary employees on the frontlines of the agencies, including workers in visitor services, field operations and emergency operations. Another third of the job losses came from the reassignment of Interior Department staff from regional offices to the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

And now the Forest Service, as part of a “sweeping restructuring” will be moving its headquarters from D.C. to Salt Lake City in a move that will close all 10 of its regional offices across the country, including the Region 2 headquarters in Lakewood, where the Federal Center employs more than 6,000 workers in 28 federal agencies. The Forest Service also is consolidating all of its research centers into a single operation in Fort Collins. 

“We need these foresters and oil and gas specialists on the ground here in Colorado,” Fitzwilliams said. “I really do worry about the work getting done. I’m not sure they have a plan. It’s like their war plan: ‘Let’s bomb these people and figure out what happens later.’”

An under-the-public-radar federal rule change is shrinking pay for migrant farmworkers at the same time a highly debated new state law is going to cut into their overtime pay. 

The U.S. Department of Labor has changed the way wages are calculated for H-2A seasonal workers and is allowing employers to pay $2 to $3 less per hour to those workers who receive housing as part of their work contracts. The federal government requires that housing for H-2A workers.

This change championed by the Trump administration will affect the estimated 3,500 H-2A workers who toil in Colorado’s fields and orchards each year. 

The Department of Labor isn’t calling this a wage decrease or a pay deduction. The new rule refers to it as a “downward compensation adjustment.” It doesn’t show up as a deduction on paychecks. The paychecks are simply smaller.

“We can’t call it a pay deduction. It’s a housing adjustment to the wage,” said Liz Talbott, who handles the accounting for H-2A workers at Talbott Farms in Palisade.

Whatever the term used to describe the change, this new federal rule means that H-2A farmworkers in Colorado who earned $17.84 per hour last year, will get $15.16 this year. 

The change could have dropped wages even further except that Colorado’s minimum wage requirement prevented the housing adjustment from taking a bigger bite out of paychecks. The hourly wage for Colorado farmworkers can’t go below $15.16. In some states without that minimum wage protection, H-2A farmworkers will receive as little as $9 per hour.

The new rule does not require employers to pay less, so some are opting to ignore the Department of Labor rule and to keep wages at the same level as last year.

“We are not changing it,” said Gwen Cameron, who employs 11 H-2A workers in the field crew at her Rancho Durazno orchards in Palisade. “We can still be profitable.”

She said she knows of other farms, including Honey Rock Landing in Dominguez Canyon between Delta and Grand Junction, and Topp Fruits in the North Fork Valley, that have also opted to keep wages at the 2025 level. 

News of lower wages delivered just before farmworkers headed north 

At Talbott Farms near Palisade where 95% of the workers are employed with H-2A visas, co-owner Bruce Talbott said they will make use of the new “formulation.” He said labor makes up 85% of his cost to produce peaches.

“I think this is good for the industry and good for the workers,” Bruce Talbott said. “These guys feel like they have won the lottery when they come here. They are treated well. They are still quite happy. These guys have no expenses except for food. They send 95% of their wages home.” 

He said this season some of those workers will be living in a newly completed 24-unit bunkhouse at Talbotts that can hold 48 workers.

Tuxedo Corn in Montrose County has long prided itself on fair treatment of its workers and is a participant in the national Fair Food Program. It has also opted to pay the lower wage.

“It gives me no pleasure to do that,” said David Harold, who co-owns Tuxedo with his father, John Harold. “We are adjusting everything we can to be legal but reduce our costs.”

Harold insists the new federal rule does not mean he is charging his workers for housing that Tuxedo has long provided at no charge. 

“I am not charging for housing,” Harold said. “I am paying the lower rate allowed because I provide housing.”

Harold said he advised his H-2A workers at the end of last year’s season that there might be cutbacks in paychecks this year.

Some migrant farmworkers had no idea about the lower pay until they showed up at the American Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, said Iriana Medina Roy, the executive director of La Plaza, a resource center for migrant workers in Palisade. 

H-2A rules require migrant workers to travel to Monterrey to sign their work contracts and board buses that take them to jobs across the United States. Some reportedly opted to return home when they learned of the lower pay. 

“The workers are not happy. But work is work,” Medina Roy said. “For me, it seems not just. It is not fair.”

Cameron said there is still a lot of confusion among workers about the wage adjustment that is part of a byzantine set of tiered pay changes called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate.  

The primary purpose of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate is to prevent the employment of foreign workers from negatively impacting the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers.

Calculating wages to fit within that framework includes having to establish pay levels based on different tiers of skill levels and on the fact that domestic workers generally do not receive housing benefits as migrant workers do.

Liz Talbott said she tried to let workers know about the change coming in their paychecks, but for the first group of 50 Talbott’s workers who came to the Monterrey consulate in January and February, there was little information from the Department of Labor to pass on to workers. Growers say they are still sorting through the perplexing rules — an effort that has been slowed and complicated by the recent government shutdown.

“We didn’t receive a lot of guidance so we didn’t have a lot of information for our workers,” she said.

She said she hopes to be able to provide better information for 45 H-2A workers who will come to Talbott Farms in June. 

Bruce Talbott said the bigger concern for his H-2A workers now is the new state legislation, Senate Bill 121, that will increase the point at which agricultural workers are eligible for overtime pay to 56 hours per week from 48 starting on Jan. 1, 2027.

Legislation passed in 2021 that went into effect last year had set the overtime threshold at 48 hours for most workers who are classified as highly seasonal. During peak weeks of work that threshold can go up to 56 hours for some small growers. Workers must be paid time and a half over that threshold. 

Senate Bill 121 squeaked by on a vote of 33-32 after some of the most contentious debates on the House Floor this session centered on worker protections and help for struggling farmers. The bill is currently on Gov. Jared Polis’ desk awaiting his signature.

Four upstream states in the Colorado River Basin, including Colorado, agreed to release up to 325 billion gallons of water out of a Wyoming reservoir to help one of the basin’s most important water supplies, Lake Powell. 

The lake’s water levels have fallen to historical lows after 20 years of prolonged drought, and this year’s record-poor snowpack is exacerbating an already tense situation. The Upper Basin states’ approval is the first step in finalizing the releases under a 2019 agreement to help the basin respond to extremely dry years. The Department of the Interior is expected to approve the plan this week after announcing the intended drought-response releases Friday.

But pulling from the Wyoming reservoir, Flaming Gorge, will have local impacts, the state’s officials said during an Upper Colorado River Commission meeting Tuesday. 

“Nobody’s incredibly anxious to do this,” Colorado’s Commissioner Becky Mitchell said before a vote.

“All in reluctant favor?” she said, followed by unanimous approval.

The releases could begin as soon as Thursday pending the Secretary of the Interior’s final approval, said Wayne Pullen, the Upper Colorado Basin regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation.

Basin states were still waiting for the expected federal approval as of Wednesday afternoon.

The mountains in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico provide most of the water that flows through the Colorado River Basin to support 40 million people and multibillion-dollar industries. 

This year, the Upper Colorado River Basin’s snowpack peaked around March 9, a month early, and has been declining rapidly, Chuck Cullom, UCRC executive director, said Tuesday.

The forecast flows into Lake Powell totaled 1.4 million acre-feet as of April. It was expected to drop to 900,000 acre-feet within the next month — which roughly equals the spring runoff into the immense reservoir in 2002, another extremely dry year, Cullom said.

One acre-foot equals about 325,800 gallons, or the water used by two to four households each year.

With the small inflows at Powell, officials are warning that water levels in the reservoir, located on the Utah-Arizona border, could fall below a critical elevation. 

At that point, low water levels could lead to damage in the dam’s internal infrastructure, like the pipes that lead to electricity generating turbines, or fall below the turbine intakes, which would halt power production altogether.

“It’s clear that additional actions at Lake Powell are necessary,” Cullom said.

But the decision comes with local impacts and basinwide drawbacks.

The upstream reservoirs, including Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming-Utah border, are small and the drought releases are a limited tool, Wyoming’s Commissioner Brandon Gebhart said. 

The drought releases won’t rescue the basin from an extended water crisis, he and other state and tribal officials said. 

It’s a short-term solution: Once released, the water can’t be relied upon year after year, officials said. It’s going to take time for these reservoirs to recover before the states can do this again.

Flaming Gorge was 46% full and 57 feet below capacity as of Tuesday.

The drought releases will have significant negative impacts on water resources, local economies, fisheries, local marinas and recreation in the Upper Basin, Gebhart said.

Colorado communities felt similar impacts in 2021 and 2022 when state and federal officials agreed to draw down Blue Mesa, a federal reservoir near Gunnison and the largest in Colorado, to support water levels at Lake Powell. 

Blue Mesa recovered its lost water, but with spring runoff so low, federal and state officials do not plan to tap Blue Mesa this year as part of the drought-response plan.

This year’s decision to release additional water in response to drought wasn’t made lightly, Gebhart said. 

“We wouldn’t be recommending this release, except for the historically dry conditions,” he said.

A rare fire weather warning has been issued by the National Weather Service, warning both rural and urban residents in south central and southeastern Colorado of 60-mph wind gusts and extremely dry conditions Wednesday that pose a “significant threat to life and property.”

Strong winds out of the southwest, between 25 and 35 mph, coupled with relative humidity levels in the single digits, prompted forecasters to warn of a “particularly dangerous situation” in the Upper Arkansas Valley, the San Luis Valley, the Wet Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The conditions are expected from 10 a.m. to midnight Wednesday, though the highest risk will be between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

“In some cases, safe and timely evacuation may not be possible should a fire approach,” forecasters in Pueblo said. 

Critical fire weather conditions are forecast across much of southeastern Colorado on Wednesday, stretching from the New Mexico border to the south to the Kansas border to the east.

In the San Luis Valley, blowing dust could bring very low visibility at times, making travel difficult, and strong winds could blow down trees and power lines.

“Use caution if you must drive across the San Luis Valley on Wednesday,” forecasters warned. 

Xcel Energy said it will shut off power, starting at noon, to about 7,100 customers in Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla and Rio Grande counties to reduce the risk of wildfire. Customers can look up their address online to see if they may be impacted by the power shutoffs. 

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, issued April 16, 97% of Colorado is in moderate to exceptional drought conditions, caused in part to record-high temperatures in March and historically low snowpack. 

Elevated fire danger could continue through Thursday, forecasters said.

Federal and state officials have proposed severe drought response actions, like drastically cutting water releases from Lake Powell, in face of a historically dry year and worsening conditions in the Colorado River Basin.

The Bureau of Reclamation announced Friday it will likely reduce Lake Powell water releases to 6 million acre-feet, the lowest amount in decades. It also intends to release additional water from Flaming Gorge, an upstream reservoir, to help elevate the water level in Lake Powell. The decisions could raise the specter of forced water cuts in states including Colorado, impact endangered fish populations and affect communities and economies.

Basin states, tribes and partners continue to provide feedback on the proposed releases. A final decision will be coming next week, Reclamation said Friday in a news release.

“Given the severity of the risks facing the Colorado River system, it is imperative that we take action quickly to protect a resource that supplies water to 40 million people and supports vital agricultural, hydropower production, tribal, wildlife, and recreational uses across the region,” Andrea Travnicek, Reclamation’s assistant secretary of water and science, said in the news release.

The Colorado River Basin, which stretches from Colorado’s mountains to the Pacific Ocean, saw about a quarter of its typical snowpack this year. The skimpy snowpack also shrank the amount of water flowing into the basin’s two major reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, the largest reservoirs in the nation. Lake Powell’s lower probable inflow is forecast to be just 2.78 million acre-feet — 29% of historical average and one of the lowest on record.

Powell held about a quarter of its storage capacity as of a Bureau of Reclamation presentation Friday. Mead held about a third of its capacity. The amount of water stored in federal reservoirs across the basin was just 36% as of Friday.

If the water level at Lake Powell falls too low, it can endanger critical infrastructure in the dam and stop hydroelectric power generation, which helps supply communities across the West with affordable, renewable energy. 

The immense reservoir’s water levels are projected to fall below these key points by August, according to a monthly federal forecast released Friday called the 24-month study.

Or it could be as early as June, the Upper Colorado River Commission said in a news release Friday. The commission is a joint body that includes the Upper Basin states, like Colorado, and is a deciding force in Upper Basin water policy.

In response, the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell, has already held back about 598,000 acre-feet of water to try to maintain higher water levels in the reservoir. (One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to four urban households.)

That water was scheduled to flow to downstream communities in Arizona, California, Nevada and northern Mexico. The bureau still plans to release it before the water year ends Sept. 30, according to the April 24-month study. 

But that is not enough.

To elevate water levels in Lake Powell, Reclamation officials intend to release 660,000 to 1 million acre-feet of additional water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border. The reservoir was 83% full as of Friday, and the releases over the next 12 months will reduce it to 59% of its capacity.

As of Friday, Reclamation did not plan to release water from two other upstream reservoirs — Blue Mesa, the largest reservoir in Colorado, and Navajo Reservoir on the Colorado-New Mexico border — because of their low water levels and poor forecast inflows.

The bureau also intends to release a total of 6 million acre-feet from Glen Canyon Dam this water year, which began Oct. 1 and will end Sept. 30.

For months, Reclamation has been planning to release a total of 7.48 million acre-feet from the dam. Since 2015, releases have ranged from about 7.08 million acre-feet in 2022 to 9.26 million acre-feet in 2019, according to a 2024 report from the Upper Colorado River Commission.

Reclamation only has limited authority to drop releases to 6 million acre-feet because of a near-term agreement developed in 2024 in response to the basin’s prolonged drought, shrinking flows, overuse and plummeting reservoir levels.

If the feds release 6 million acre-feet of water this year, it could open the door to legal arguments from Lower Basin states calling for upstream states to make forced water cuts.

Lawsuits — often dubbed the nuclear option — could mire the entire basin in years of legal uncertainty and expensive court battles while leaving the basin’s water future in the hands of U.S. Supreme Court justices instead of local and state water managers.

Responses around the basin

Politicians, water officials, environmental groups and other water users are voicing widespread concerns about conditions in the basin. 

The shrunken releases from Lake Powell will accelerate declining water levels in Lake Mead, potentially reducing Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity by 40% as early as this fall, Reclamation’s announcement said.

At upstream reservoirs, boating access may be reduced earlier in the season than normal. In the Grand Canyon, lower flow rates will affect rafting conditions, and fishing may be more challenging. At Lake Mead National Recreation Area, reduced water levels may further limit boating access, the bureau said.

In Colorado, cities and water utilities are calling for residents with lawns and gardens to make voluntary water cutbacks. In some cases, they are implementing drought restrictions.

Some environmental advocacy groups, including Western Resource Advocates, are pushing Reclamation to time releases to mimic natural conditions to benefit native and endangered fish and other aquatic species if they have to make releases from upstream reservoirs. 

There are endangered fish in the Green River below Flaming Gorge that could benefit if the drought response releases replicate the natural surge of water during spring runoff.

“The water is going to Powell regardless, so let’s do it in a way that actually provides some benefit along the way,” said John Berggren, WRA’s regional policy manager for the healthy rivers department.

In a joint statement earlier this month, governors from the four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — said their states are actively cutting off water users, like farmers and ranchers.

“This is an unprecedented year on the Colorado River, and likely will be one of the worst on record,” governors from four upstream states, including Colorado, said in a news release this month. “A dry year like this reminds us of why it is critical that all who rely on this resource learn to live within its means and adapt our uses accordingly.”

In early April, the governors spoke in favor of releasing water from Flaming Gorge or other upstream reservoirs, as long as the releases comply with existing agreements and reservoirs eventually recover the water they lost because of the drought release.

“We must have a clear understanding of how these proposed releases will effectively protect elevations at Lake Powell,” the governors said. “Once the releases conclude, we expect that all water released from Flaming Gorge and other upstream reservoirs will be fully recovered.”

This year’s water challenges come at a time of transition, Reclamation said. The existing agreements that guided Colorado River reservoir operations for 20 years are set to expire this year. 

The seven basin states have not reached consensus on a new operating framework, the bureau said. 

Without that agreement, the Interior Department, which oversees the bureau, “will be prepared to determine operations for post-2026 later this summer to provide certainty and stability for the Colorado River Basin,” Reclamation said.