HOLISTIC RECOURCE MANAGEMENT

Image Gallery Allan Savory, America's chief proponent of holistic resource management, examines the results of overrested rangeland near Albuquerque, New Mexico ? dead grass and weakened browse, both due to poor water cycling. PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY THE AUTHOR

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

If you're watching your livestock pasture turn to desert, there's hope for greener times with...

by Sam Bingham

Most Americans have forgotten that, back before the historic and colorful cattle drives of the late 1800's, our western rangelands stood tall in rich grasses that supported vast herds of bison and other wild ungulates. Today, much of the same land is barren and parched, providing only a marginal living for a scant few sheep and cattle.

It's our own fault, of course: Our ancestors extirpated the bison, fenced in the land, and packed it with herds of cattle and sheep. The cattle and sheep killed the grass by overgrazing, and with the grass went the remaining wildlife and the best of the topsoil—topsoil that had supported abundant plant and animal life for millenia. After a century of such abuse, the land began showing symptoms of desertification: flash floods and erosion, dust and silt, tumbleweed and scrub.

And though many have tried, none have been able to restore native grasslands once they were lost to desertification from overgrazing. Some tried by planting seed, others by burning, bulldozing, or poisoning desert brush. Still others killed off wild game and even their own livestock to reduce grazing pressure on the land. And all failed because they were merely putting Band-Aids on symptoms.

But help may be just across the pasture: Over the past three decades, a totally different approach to arid-country grazing practices—called holistic resource management, or HRM—has been taking shape.

HRM says that if you can identify and put into balance certain critical aspects of nature, the trend toward desertification will be reversed: Grass and livestock production will increase dramatically, and the land will heal itself.

A SYMBIOSIS

Conventional wisdom blames dead grass on big herds and overgrazing, yet fails to explain how millions of large grazing animals evolved and thrived on the very same land for thousands of years without destroying the grass as cattle and sheep have done in just one century.

What it boils down to, says HRM thinking, is that everyone knows that ungulates need grass, but not everyone knows that grass needs ungulates. It does: Minerals and organic nutrients don't recycle properly without the help of large animals that drop dung. Seeds won't germinate or rainwater get absorbed unless the soil is broken up by sharp hooves.

And unbitten grass will simply die of old age. In short, without the impact of grazing herds, the natural balance of plant and animal life is destroyed.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print