CNN founder Ted Turner’s New Mexico ranch helped save North America’s rarest large tortoise, growing its population from 30 to about 800

For thousands of years, the Bolson tortoise had been missing from the grasslands of New Mexico. Then a private ranch offered the species something it had not had in generations: space to start again. What began with just 30 captive tortoises grew into a population of roughly 800 through a long-running conservation effort backed by Ted Turner’s Turner Endangered Species Fund. Among the animals was Gertie, an elderly female estimated to be at least 80 years old, whose eggs have helped keep the breeding programme going.

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