Reported by Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent

[Male salesperson's voice] This 15,000-acre ranch is known for its productive hills and the abundance of water...

[Female salesperson's voice] 35,000-acre ranching empire...

[2nd male salesperson's voice] Featuring 16,000 Cherry County acres all in one block, one of the best in Nebraska.

[Bill Kelly, Statewide correspondent] For city folk the horizon-to-horizon land deals involved in the sale of a major ranching empire are simply staggering. The prices breathtaking. Half a million, a million eight, ten million plus... The buyers are out there, cash in hand, or at least Dave Armstrong hopes so. After facing off with feisty bulls all his life, Armstrong is ready to retire. His pride and joy, the Maverick Ranch, went on the market this summer.

[Dave Armstrong, owner of the Maverick Ranch] This hill-line that you see clear over there on the far eastern horizon. You're looking just about right in here.

A map cannot possibly do justice to the scope and beauty of Dave Armstrong's 8,700-acre Sandhills' empire nor can it really illustrate how the real estate market has begun to change.

[Armstrong] One time this end of the county was owned by three families -- Oltmanns, Wales and Clappers. There is one Wales family left. There's one Clapper family left. And the Oltmann's are gone.

This rancher's reluctant retirement is an opportunity for Steve Wolf, the realtor given the exclusive listing for as pristine and productive of a piece of land as you're going to find. It's a $1.8 million property.

[Armstrong] We have had some people that are looking at the ranch that come from western Wyoming. One of the reasons that they're going to move is that they don't like the influx of people that are coming from California in their area.

Among the new buyers looking for prime real estate, out-of-staters from farther west, wealthy city folk looking for recreational land and lots of it and entrepreneurs interested in creating hunting lodges for birds and big game.

[Steve Wolf, real estate agent] Our populated areas they're putting groups together and coming out and buying a place like this. There's a tremendous amount of hunting, fishing, just trail rides, whatever you want to do. They want a piece of this. And they are a major part of the buying market right now in my mind.

Some of those recreational entrepreneurs talk of continued cattle production on the land. In other states such private game reserves also shut down cattle production in favor of better bird and game hunting.

[Wolf] I can't be discriminatory on who I sell to. The sellers, like somebody's who put their whole life into a place like this, who's planted over 40,000 trees, he'd love to see it taken care of and maintained the way he took care of it. Some of these investors, outsiders don't understand the fragileness of the Sandhills, don't have the love for the ground. Hopefully they will understand and learn and take care of it properly.

Are you going to worry about it after you leave?

[Armstrong] Oh, you always have concern, I guess.

Business is business and those motivated and well-financed buyers have been good for the Nebraska real estate market. Despite low cattle prices, ranchland prices are holding pretty steady. That's what happens when there's a strong demand for a good product.

[Craig Lambley, real estate agent] All this is God's country. This is where you want to be.

Craig Lambley has heard from a lot of different types of buyers lately.

[Lambley] The Sandhills from here are beautiful. There's just nothing like them in the world.

He's another successful realtor specializing in ranchland. He hears from another class of buyer, city people willing to buy ranch land as an investment while using its beauty and wildlife for recreation and sport.

[Lambley] I just had a doctor from Omaha come up. We spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon on it. He's a neat individual. He grew up on a farm in Iowa so he's a practical guy to start with. He would just as soon if he could just get permission to fish and hunt instead of spending the ten million.

He said ten million? That's dollars. All for one spread Lambley spent the summer trying to sell, Bar-25, one of the most spectacular ranches north of Ainsworth. 35,000 acres of Niobrara River frontage, beautiful homes, and productive land.

[Lambley] It's hard to perceive $10 million, but you also have to understand you're going to produce 2,000 calves a year. You're going to keep four families working. It's not just recreational.

Then there's another new truly nontraditional buyer, the environmentalist.

[Female environmentalist] It's all organic material.

Dead plants, dead grass.

[Female environmentalist] Yeah. It supports a lot of vegetation and the rapid decomposition makes this soil.

It's a comparatively small parcel, 3,800 acres, but the unique form of wetlands here, the fens, make it worth preserving. The fens are mushy, waterlogged bogs that formed in the low spots in the Sandhills. The Nature Conservancy, the group dedicated to buying and preserving unique natural habitats, bought the land in the hope of restoring the fens.

[Vince Shay, Nebraska State Director of the Nature Conservancy] So we follow the market. I mean, it's always our intention to follow the market and not to create the market.

Vin Shay is the Nebraska State Director for the Nature Conservancy.

[Shay] So they were looking for a unique buyer and I think they understood the Nature Conservancy to perhaps be that buyer. They contacted us, and the project, in a nutshell, is acquisition, restoration of two drained fens that are on the property, and resale eventually with conservation easements of the entire property.

At county courthouses around the state the new neighbors brought in by a fluid land market has the attention of county officials, especially in Cherry County.

[Female county courthouse clerk] So he pretty much has all of this.

After all everyone here is still a bit amazed that cable television czar Ted Turner serves as absentee landlord over his mega-sized buffalo ranch. It created a stir even if the previous owner had been from Texas.

[Female county courthouse clerk] He has 31,761 and 5,973.

Plus another 3,600?

[Female county courthouse clerk] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Lawrence Turner, Cherry County commissioner] It's got, I think, everyone thinking in the county about the trend.

It's an issue with the Cherry County commissioners because private land purchases can affect land prices, especially if large ranches get subdivided by speculators.

[Jim VanWinkle, Cherry County commissioner] It's very easy for them to buy, you know, a quarter of land or half section at a pretty inflated price, and farmers and ranchers can't compete with that.

[Turner] Those are troubling over a period of time because they continue to force our valuation up. We have not had a terrible problem with that in Cherry County. To date the Department of Revenue has been willing to make some adjustments on those non-agricultural sales.

Of greater concern would be the purchases that could take taxable land off the tax roles, be it charity or government, thereby reducing revenue to schools and local government. While it's considered a charity, the Nature Conservancy elects to continue to pay taxes.

[Zale Quible, Cherry County Commissioner] I don't think that's a bad thing. The Nature Conservancy pays their real estate taxes to support the schools and the fire districts and the county and every other taxing entity just like the rest of us that own land, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Nonetheless, it's a trend that concerns Rod Palmer, an attorney and rancher in Ainsworth.

[Rod Palmer, attorney and rancher] I think there's always concern about the cost of land being inflated beyond its production capabilities. And when that happens, of course, then the burden is placed upon all the other farmers and ranchers.

Palmer also shares the leeriness of some of his neighbors about out of state landlords, environmentalists buying land, and having the government as a neighbor.

[Palmer] They're not the good neighbors that their old neighbors were, and they just don't appreciate the unneighborliness of the new buyers, and for that reason they are weary of people like that.

[2nd Cherry County commissioner] Like to keep the locals owning it and we like to know who the owners are. But a lot of these people coming in are super good neighbors and then some of them are not.

From the county courthouse to out on the range, that's the concern shared by nearly everyone. More than tax dollars and land values, it seems, good neighbors and care for the land are overriding.

[Lambley] If the new people in are good neighbors, they pay their real estate taxes, they take care of their livestock and their crops, they're very well perceived.

But Craig Lambley says anyone selling Nebraska ranchland shouldn't be deceived by talk of big dollar buyers lurking in the wings. It's still smart business that drives a sale.

[Lambley] We haven't seen a big change in the market. Those people -- and I don't care if it's Nature Conservancy or Ted Turner or anyone else of that caliber -- they're not going to pay over the market value. The people with money and have acquired assets, they didn't get that by being foolish investors.

For Statewide, I'm Bill Kelly.