CBS Sunday Morning features Ted Turner's Nature Preserves

You can now visit several in person!

CBS Sunday Morning featured Ted Turner’s conservation efforts this week in a piece that showcases the lands and endangered species he has helped preserve.

This story is personal to me because his son, Rhett Turner, photographed these wild places, and I spent a summer making prints for an exhibition that accompanied his book, Conserving America’s Wild Lands: The Vision of Ted Turner. I looked at every square inch of those photos while making the prints, experiencing the details and character of these lands in a unique way. Even with my background of making tens of thousands of prints over the years, these photos and places stood out because of their beauty and the rare things they preserve (ecosystems, petroglyphs, endangered species, and more). The exhibition was displayed at the Booth Western Art Museum and The Museum of the Rockies.

One of the high points of the CBS piece was when they showed the bat cave. Rhett told me about these bats, which have flown from the same cave for thousands of years. Watching it happen in the video was truly remarkable, and I can only imagine how impactful it would be to experience it in person. This cave is just one of the many wonders that Ted Turner has helped preserve, and which Rhett has so beautifully captured in his photographs.

If you like the video, there is even more to experience in the book—and if you want to travel a few steps further, you can now visit some of these private lands in person. Part of Ted Turner’s vision is to preserve wild spaces in such a way that they are self-supporting, so he has opened four of his properties in New Mexico to visitors.

This video—and the print project—made me grateful to Ted Turner for preserving these beautiful places, and for Rhett, who took the effort to tell the story.