What Do Ted Turner and Prairie Dogs Have in Common?

Ted Turner is sounding more and more like an environmental activist these days, and less like the media mogul he was for so many years.

Granted, he still runs a meat-heavy restaurant that he named after himself. But he's also, he said during an event at the Center of the American West, a conservationist and friend to bison and prairie dogs, both species that can use some love in the west.

He is the largest owner of bison in the country—the U.S. is behind him at number two. He spoke for an hour before receiving an award from the center about how he got started, back when the population of bison, America's largest land mammal, was down to a relative handful. He was new to the west, fell in love with it, and wanted to help preserve it—hence the award.

But part of that was keeping his own bison: he now has 55,000 on his two-million-acre property. He also learned about the plight of prairie dogs, and that population has also thrived, growing from a few colonies to an estimated 250,000.

He said he uses "no pesticides whatsoever" on those two million acres, and rambled into his next point about how the cancer epidemic in this country can be attributed to all the chemicals we use.

Fewer pesticides, more biodiversity

"We've been irresponsible stewards of the land," he said, using the corn-dominated state of Iowa as an example, calling it a biological desert because of all the pesticides used in growing corn there. He said farmers have to import bottled water because the chemicals leach so far down into the ground, affecting local water quality.

"Let's have a few grasshoppers," was his attitude. "What's wrong with that?"

From there, the conversation somehow transitioned into poverty, politics, nuclear weapons, and women's rights.

He's disappointed with the current Congress, and warned of the consequences for the planet if we don't clean our act up soon: "Our children our going to suffer."

And how women's equality should be a top priority for the world—for many reasons, not least of which is the potential that education has to slow planet-threatening population growth. "If women are more educated, they won't stand for having seven or eight kids."