Billionaire Joe Ricketts' latest drama is right out of 'Yellowstone'

27.06.2024 - 18:49 / insider.com / Donald Trump

As one local put it, if Bondurant, Wyoming — a town of wide open spaces and a population of 156, per the 2022 census — "is not heaven, it's in the same ZIP code."

"It's God's country," Joshua Coursey continued to Business Insider. He's the CEO and president of the Muley Fanatic Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting the native mule deer.

And in God's country, it looks like mule deer will remain protected.

In a plotline straight out of Paramount's soapy western "Yellowstone," billionaire Joe Ricketts — the TD Ameritrade founder, part-owner of the Chicago Cubs, and Donald Trump mega-donor — got shut down by Sublette County, Wyoming, where he had requested the removal of a local restriction meant to protect moose, elk, and, yes, muledeer.

Earlier this spring, Ricketts, worth $4.1 billion, per Forbes, broke ground on the luxury Homestead Resort, which is set to feature a 20-unit hotel, underground spa, and restaurant. He calls it "Little Jackson Hole," though, in reality, billionaire hot spot Jackson Hole is in neighboring Teton County.

"If I advertise as Bondurant, well, nobody in Los Angeles and New York knows where it is," Ricketts, who bought land in the area 20 years ago, said at a public meeting last year, according to local news outlet WyoFile. "But if I advertise Little Jackson Hole, every angler knows where it is. Northwest Wyoming is a mecca for fishing trout."

(He's also pointed to the historical name of the area as a guiding principle for the name, though it doesn't seem locals are buying it.)

Part of his pitch was the conservation effort associated with the resort: Ricketts promised to make the 56 acres a safe place for moose, elk, and the like — and to use tourism dollars to ensure the land stays safe.

"We will open up corridors across my ranch during the migration season so that the ungulates can go through," he reportedly said at last year's meeting. "Now remember, I told you, we have to get tourists to pay for this stuff in order for it to be successful." (It's unclear if anyone at the meeting asked why he can't just pay for the corridors with his own money, as he has previously donated to the cause.)

In order to get tourists there, he'd have to build a hotel — but according to the proposal by a representative for Ricketts at a town meeting last week, the best way to build a safe haven for the ungulates of the West would be to sidestep some of the rules protecting them, specifically, the one that prevents construction between November 15 and April 30.

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The representative proposed that the wildlife protections be put on pause to allow construction to continue this fall and winter, with certain measures in place — such as a speed limit, no work once the sun had gone