BILLINGS, Mont. -- With 88 bison from Yellowstone National Park facing possible slaughter, billionaire Ted Turner has swept in and offered to hold the animals for five years on his sprawling Montana ranch while a new home for them is found.
But Turner, ever the shrewd businessman, won't do it for nothing. The media mogul says he will care for the bison only if he can keep up to 90 percent of their offspring.
And in the Rocky Mountain West -- where wildlife is cherished both for its aesthetic value and as meat on the table -- the plan is stoking a sharp debate over the role of deep-pocketed private entities in conservation.
Hunters, environmentalists and property law experts have all weighed in and most say Turner's plan sets a dangerous precedent for the commercialization of public wildlife. Others describe Turner as a responsible steward of the land with the resources needed to take care of animals that desperately need a home.
Even the urgency of the situation is open to question.
Despite warnings from Montana about possible slaughter, federal officials said earlier this month that the bison could be kept longer if needed at a quarantine compound north of the park. They have already been there for several years to make sure they are disease free.
Dennis Tilton, a rancher from nearby Livingston who worked for a year feeding the animals under government contract, said giving the animals to Turner amounted to "robbing from the public domain." He said the state should put them onto public land to establish new herds.
Filmmaker: Movie about balloon dad could clear him
LOS ANGELES -- Once Richard Heene admitted in court that he wrongly sent authorities on a wild goose chase across Colorado to save the son he thought was aloft in a runaway balloon, friends and supporters seemed to take off just about as fast as that balloon.
All except for one: Steven C. Barber, a 48-year-old filmmaker who says he still believes Heene really thought his son was in the balloon as it spun wildly through the skies on Oct. 15. He plans to prove it, Barber says, when he releases the documentary "Balloon Boy: Guilty Until Proven Innocent" later this year.
Barber has known Heene for more than 10 years and says he has dozens of hours of film of the backyard inventor pursuing one science project after another. He compiled much of that footage, the filmmaker says, in an effort to help Heene land a TV reality show chronicling his science adventures.
What Heene was trying to do with the balloon, Barber says, was solve the world's traffic problems by creating a cheap, lighter-than-air vehicle that would allow people to float over congested freeways.
Although the idea may sound far-fetched to some, even ridiculous to others, Barber says, Heene is a "mad genius" with a penchant for exploring offbeat scientific theories.
"He's a freakin' genius, a really smart guy -- and he's a good guy," Barber says of Heene as he sits in his Venice apartment.
It is there that Barber is culling through a decade's worth of interviews with Heene, including footage he says he traveled to Colorado to shoot of the balloon before its Oct. 15 launch and footage taken afterward to get Heene's side of the story. He wasn't there on the actual day of the balloon debacle.
He's willing to show only one brief snippet of film, taken before the launch, when the balloon was still in pieces on the floor of Heene's Fort Collins, Colo., home and he was explaining how he planned to put it together. Barber said he filmed that segment for one of the many TV show pitches he helped put together for Heene.
"I was out here for years trying to help him get TV shows," he says. "I've gotten him lots of pitches."
