The bison bulls crowd close to our white pickup truck as it rolls down a dirt track, wooly heads still heavy with their winter coats, beards waggling. Deep brown eyes track us as we inch forward through the short-grass prairie at the southern end of Vermejo, the 558,000-acre Ted Turner Reserve that stretches from Cimarron, New Mexico, to the Colorado border. Down the track, bison cows and yearlings bound over bleached grass and prairie dog mounds, with the blue Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance.
This is the Castle Rock herd, the pride of Vermejo. These massive ruminants are the genetic descendants of four of the six “foundation” herds from which all North American bison descend. Kept separate from other herds to maintain their lineage and unique genetics, these 1,400 bison have the run of Vermejo, says my guide Mason Moir, from the prairie to the alpine tundra, migrating as the seasons change just as their ancestors did. In turn, they act as a keystone species in Vermejo’s regenerative grazing and overall rewilding, a project the late Ted Turner pursued when he acquired the ranch in 1996.
Turner, the media mogul turned active conservationist, died May 6, 2026, at the age of 87, leaving behind a legacy of 15 properties across the American West, Georgia, and Florida. Vermejo and an as-yet-undetermined number of Turner’s other properties will become part of a nonprofit institute that will posthumously carry on his rewilding work and expand it.
