Re-Creating the West …One Decision at a Time
by Allan Savory
Sit back and imagine healthy rangelands, rich in biological diversity, healthy wildlife populations and clear-running streams alive with fish. Soils would be covered with living plants and in between them with a layer of mulch and litter acting as a sponge for precipitation. Water that formerly flowed off in flood would now percolate down to replenish aquifers and nourish perennial rivers. Droughts would be rare, even in low rainfall years. Vast amounts of carbon would be sequestered within the soil, enabling us to better combat global climate change. Unimaginable quantities of lean, healthy meat from wildlife and livestock, as well as other products, could be produced to help feed a hungry world. Rural families, communities and towns would be prosperous.
If our western rangelands were in such condition would residential and commercial development even be a problem? (What rancher would consider selling out?) Would there be much conflict over public lands? Would we even be holding this conference?
That our western rangelands were once in such condition is certain. What then has brought about the change to what we have today where so much of the life in our soils has been lost, ranch families survive on razor-thin profit margins in the best of times, and flooding has become the leading weather-related cause of death? I hope to show you that the underlying cause of this deterioration is in the way humans make decisions—something that hasn’t changed fundamentally since we gained the ability to reason, make tools and light fires. And I also hope to convince you that if we change the way we make decisions—whether we’re ranchers, farmers, developers, academics, extension agents, politicians, or urban dwellers—we can begin to restore much of what we have lost in the West beyond the 100th meridian.
If it is a given that we all make decisions in our own self-interest, how have we gone so wrong? To understand, we need to go back to the rangelands of prehistoric times, well before the development of modern humans. Although there are a great many problems associated with croplands, forests, and urban centers in the American West, I concentrate on the rangelands for two reasons. First, the rangelands make up the bulk of the land area in the West, and thus serve as the largest water catchment area, ultimately controlling the fate of our water supplies. Second, when we do not understand the ecological processes at work in rangeland environments, and how they deteriorate in the absence of large herbivores, we use fire excessively to try to maintain grassland, which can exacerbate desertification and atmospheric pollution.
Rangeland Plants, Grazing Animals and Soils Co-Evolved
Soils, plants and animals in the rangelands of America co-evolved over millions of years. Over these vast eons of time, massive fluctuations in life forms took place—periodic extinctions were often followed by periods of even greater speciation. Then, following the arrival of skilled human hunters between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, 74% of the large mammal genera in North America became extinct, most likely at the hands of these hunters who, in addition, burned the land extensively. The loss of these animals, most of which were herbivores, and the increased incidence of fire, dramatically altered the American landscape in a geologically brief time span.
What was so different about human hunters as opposed to the myriad predators that had hunted the same large herbivores for eons? Most of the large herbivores evolved in seasonal rainfall environments, which characterize the American West, and they did so in association with pack-hunting predators. A standard defense of most herbivores against pack hunters was to drop all their young over a compressed time period, thus overwhelming their predators. But their primary defense was to form into tightly bunched herds. Predators, fearing the large massed herd, had for millions of years been forced to isolate an animal to kill it, following which the whole pack fed on the one animal. Predators rarely killed out their prey en masse because they would then starve en masse. When prey decreased, so did predators.
When humans became large animal hunters, as opposed to mere scavengers, things were suddenly different. The large herbivores were now faced with something entirely new—an omnivorous primate that had acquired the use of fire, weapons, language and organizational skills and learned they could hunt large prey in packs. This new pack hunter was able to drive whole herds over cliffs or into boggy areas, killing vast numbers, but feeding on few. The wastage of meat was often enormous. Because the human pack hunter was an omnivore, human numbers were not limited by the numbers of their prey. When prey decreased, they could supplement their diets with non-animal foods.
The impressive herds of bison, elk, pronghorn and deer recorded by early European explorers were but a remnant of past diversity and numbers. Western rangelands had been in decline since the arrival of those first human hunters who had mastered the use of fire. The rangelands have continued to decline ever since, going into an even steeper dive with the destruction of the last of the large wild herds, but for those in Alaska. The replacement of bison herds with scattered livestock, followed by the introduction of regulations based on the premise that large numbers of livestock cause destruction, but fire does not, has brought us to where we are today. But why would the removal of vast herbivore numbers, or the livestock that remain, and the increased use of fire cause such a major disruption? To understand, we need to compare the vegetation life cycle—birth, growth, death and decay—in two types of environment.
Brittle and Nonbrittle Environments
All rangelands experience seasonal rainfall. Total rainfall can be high or low, but it is limited to a relatively brief period, as is the humidity. In these "brittle" environments the bulk of the aboveground vegetation (leaves, stems, etc.) dies over a period of a few months every year when the growing season ends. By contrast, in the perennially humid, or "non-brittle" environments of the world, where total rainfall can also be high or low but occurs throughout the year, aboveground vegetation dies throughout the year.
A look at the types of herbivore that developed in both environments reveals a marked difference. In the brittle, seasonal rainfall environments, although insect herbivores are plentiful, the main herbivores—those consuming the bulk of the vegetation—are large mammals. In perennially humid, or non-brittle environments, the main herbivores are insects.
In both types of environment, the main agents of decay, itself a living process, are small organisms of many forms. In non-brittle environments massive populations of microorganisms quickly decay whatever plant material dies during the year. Resting such environments, or "leaving them to Nature," even when severely damaged, helps restore them because the life cycle—birth, growth, death, decay—remains unimpeded. Where ancient civilizations were abandoned, their ruins quickly covered over with vegetation.
In brittle environments, where most aboveground vegetation dies at the end of the growing season, the insect and microorganism populations responsible for biological decay also die down. The dead vegetation, unable to decay, begins to oxidize, a much slower breakdown process. It is here that the large herbivore role becomes so apparent. Large herbivores cannot digest coarse plant material on their own. However, over the eons they developed a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms that thrive in the moist environment of their digestive tracts and could complete the breakdown. It was, and still is, essential to have millions of large herbivores grazing, digesting/ruminating and contributing to the cycling of vegetation by enabling biological decay to occur. Without these animals, biological decay shifts to the much slower breakdown process of oxidation which eventually kills most perennial grass plants, those great soil stabilizers of the rangelands. Where ancient civilizations were abandoned in these environments, their ruins are today covered in desert sands.
Bunched perennial grasses have adapted to severe-grazing animals, as most large herbivores are, by moving their growth points, or buds, close to the ground, below the grazing height of the animal. These plants weaken and eventually die if not grazed because sunlight cannot filter through the gray, oxidizing leaves to reach those growth points. As the grass plants die, tap-rooted herbaceous or woody species often establish in their place. New grass plants have difficulty establishing if there are no herbivores to chip soil surfaces sealed by rainfall, trample in seeds and compact soil around them.
There are some brittle-environment grasses adapted to the absence of herbivores that can survive for prolonged periods, although not necessarily in a healthy state. These grasses are sparse in form, such as the Aristida species, or have growing points above ground level, such as tobosa. Because of their structure, these grasses are not easily killed by the accumulation of oxidizing material that occurs when biological decay is impeded. Reproduction tends to be asexual—by runners or stolons, or by seed forms adapted to drilling into bare, crusted soil.
Leaving it to Nature
The destruction caused by resting rangelands either totally (no large herbivores) or partially (too few large herbivores) is evident in the many experimental plots established by government agencies throughout the western states over 50 years ago to demonstrate the beneficial effects of livestock removal. Though these plots did improve initially, they have since deteriorated substantially. In most of them now, anywhere up to 90 percent or more of the soil is bare, but for remnant algae/lichen communities that have encrusted the soil surface. In some plots, 100 percent of the perennial grass plants have died out. In other plots a sparse population of "rest-tolerant" perennial grasses exists, reproducing asexually through stolons or runners. On a larger scale, several long-rested areas exhibit the same degree of deterioration as the experimental plots—Chaco Canyon National Park in New Mexico, Canyonlands’ Virginia Park and Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah, and the Rio Grande Nature Preserve alongside my home in Albuquerque.
Perhaps the most striking revelation provided by those experimental plots is that, no matter what their annual precipitation, the deterioration is essentially the same both inside and outside their fences today. In other words, partial rest (too few herbivores) has about the same effect, but not quite as damaging, as total rest in the long run.
Initially, the experimental plots showed improvement simply because formerly overgrazed plants were free to grow unimpeded. The contrast with the land outside their fences would have been dramatic. However, given a few years, the effects of rest would have become apparent. In the absence of large herbivores, plant material would not be breaking down rapidly through biological decay, but very slowly through oxidation, and new grass plants would not be establishing. When this happens elsewhere we "prescribe" a burn to remove the standing dead plant material and thus invigorate the grasses. But we also expose soil, making it more prone to erosion, less able to absorb and retain moisture and less hospitable to the establishment of new seedlings.
What About Overgrazing?
If our commonly-held belief is correct that overgrazing is due to overstocking, then surely western rangelands must have been terribly overgrazed before humans saved them by eliminating most of the large animals. Well, not quite.
Remember what I was saying about the primary defense that herding herbivores used to protect them from predators—bunching tightly into large herds? Well that behavior also discouraged overgrazing. A plant can only be overgrazed if exposed to severe-grazing animals too long, or re-exposed to the animals before it has recovered. Animals in high concentration dung and urinate all over their food and no animals normally will feed on their own feces. Fouling of their feed would have obliged herds to keep moving onto fresh feed and they would have been unlikely to return until the fouling effect of the dung and urine had weathered and worn off.
Research conducted by Andre Voisin in the 1950’s, confirmed that the overgrazing of each individual plant was a function of "time" not animal numbers. Damage from trampling is also a function of time. For example, if two cows spent 365 days on a piece of land it would result in 730 cow-days of grazing and trampling (2 x 365). And if 2,000 cows spent one day on the same land, it would result in 2,000 cow-days of grazing and trampling (1 x 2,000)—nearly three times the amount. The effects on the land are quite different. While two cows grazing over a year cause damage, because they repeatedly bite the same plants (and thus overgraze them) and trample the same ground (and thus pulverize the soil surface while excessively compacting it below), 2,000 cows for a day do the opposite. They are not there long enough to overgraze plants or to pulverize soil. But they’ve done the grass plants a favor by removing leaves that have or will become a liability if they don’t decay rapidly, broken the soil surface so that air and moisture can penetrate, and compacted the soil enough to provide good seed-to-soil contact so new plants can establish.
Now you can understand why vast herds of millions more large herbivores did not overgraze or overtrample the western rangelands as so few animals do today. Tragically, for centuries, humans missed the vital difference between numbers of animals and their time on and off the land, and that this was affected by the way the animals behaved in the presence of pack-hunting predators. And we missed, and generally continue to resist, the idea that only large herbivores can reverse desertification in the brittle environments of the world. It should come as no surprise that as recently as 1994 an international conference was convened in Tucson, Arizona, by a large group of scientists representing diverse institutions to answer the question, "Desertification in the Developed Countries: Why Can’t We Control It?"
Adding New Tools to our Toolbox
If you accept these ideas about the evolution of our rangelands and the essential role played by large herbivores, then you probably agree that we need to add some new tools to our land and wildlife management toolbox. Over the last million years or so humans have limited their tools to three: technology in some form (from the first primitive hand tools to modern genetic engineering) fire, and in recent centuries, rest. To this day no other tool is acceptable in mainstream thinking. In developing Holistic Management® we have added grazing, using any animal that can digest (with the help of the microorganisms it hosts) and convert plant material into dung and urine; and animal impact, the physical impact, trampling, chipping, dunging, digging, rubbing, and so on, provided by concentrated herbivores.
A growing number of people are beginning to acknowledge the need for these tools and are using livestock to help restore damaged rangelands and, in some instances, even abandoned mine dumps. And this is a heartening development because neither fire nor any human technology can promote biological decay or carbon cycling (fire spews carbon directly into the atmosphere), and thus sustain healthy rangelands. If desertification can only be reversed with the help of large herbivores, in most situations we now have only livestock to do what is needed.
Rest, Fire, and Desertification
Desertification is initiated by soil exposure. Exposed soil, even if all the rainfall it receives soaks in, leads to droughts in low rainfall years, as most of the water is lost to soil surface evaporation. Research by the Desert Research Foundation in Namibia shows that up to 83 percent of the water that soaks into exposed soil surfaces is subsequently lost to surface evaporation. In high rainfall years, exposed soil leads to high runoff and thus flooding.
The main soil exposure that matters is that which occurs between plants, due to the lack of litter or mulch. This is vastly more common than large areas of ground devoid of all plant life, but not as obvious. You won’t spot it while driving by or looking across a piece of land. It is, however, readily seen if you walk on any piece of range and look downward.
Only two things cause soil exposure between the plants over millions of acres of rangeland—rest (too few or no large herbivores present), and fire. In the absence of herbivores, the dead vegetation, remember, remains standing and oxidizing rather than being eaten or trampled to the ground where it provides a covering of litter that decays rapidly. Fire removes both standing material and litter. When rest and fire are combined, as they often are, soil exposure is magnified, as these two "tools" promote soil exposure. Soils dry out even more rapidly, and the reduction in plant roots and organic matter is substantial. As a result, even less carbon is sequestered in the soil.
Fire, by itself, has additional detrimental effects. We’ve long known that carbon in gaseous form is released through biomass burning. But more recently, researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute have discovered that rangeland fires in the U.S. and Africa are also releasing methyl bromide, which has 40 times the ozone-destroying powers of CFCs. Many people justify the use of fire today by likening human-set fires to the lightning fires that have been a natural feature of rangeland environments for a very long time.
This ignores the fact that human-set fires are now more frequent, and that even lightning fires have become more frequent due to human management. In the brittle environment rangelands of the past where truly large herds of herbivores were present, there would have been less old, and little oxidizing material on the plants at any time, but particularly at the end of the non-growing season when most lightning occurs. Now, due to the paucity of large herbivores, both wild and domestic, there is not only more old material, but also more of it that is oxidizing and thus more combustible.
I am not saying that all fire is bad. Fire is a useful management tool that has long played a role in maintaining diversity through the disturbance it provides. However, burned areas that are then rested (from large animal impact) generally suffer an increase in bare soil. This practice, which is widespread, is neither wise nor natural. Fire, like all 'tools', should only be used when it passes the testing, described later in this chapter, to ensure it is socially, environmentally and economically the correct tool to use at that point in time. Much of today's 'prescribed' burning would not pass such testing since it only accomplishes what animals, properly handled, would do routinely without soil exposure or pollution.
Until the role of rest and fire in desertification is understood and accepted it will simply not be possible to reverse the desertification process. The challenge we face in restoring our rangelands, however, goes beyond even this.
When I first realized that large animal impact was essential to reversing desertification, I did what many people today are doing—bunched animals and moved them. When I advised clients in five countries to do this they quickly fell flat on their faces. Initially, I believed this was because we could not handle the many variables involved—the complexities inherent in a rangeland environment, the differing seasons, livestock requirements, wildlife needs, and other factors—with any form of grazing rotation or set system. Thus, I developed Short Duration Grazing (eventually called the Savory Grazing Method); based upon a military planning procedure that enabled us to cater for all these variables. Hundreds of ranchers in southern Africa and South America used this new planning process in the 1960s with promising results. Then in the late 1970s I introduced the process to ranchers in the U.S. and it took off here.
Success Was Elusive
How successful was it really? All the many projects I had under my guidance in southern Africa failed in the end, including two "advanced projects" where I was pushing animal numbers to extremes in high and low rainfall with nothing but good result. The low rainfall "advanced project" lay in a very erratic 10- to 12-inch rainfall area. Here we had taken thousands of acres of severely degraded annual grassland, where there was not a single perennial grass plant even in the best of years, and restored it to full perennial grass cover at a total cost of $1.80 per acre. We had done this by trebling the stocking rate, bunching the animals and planning the grazing.
For over eight years we produced more than five times the meat per acre, and impala, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, kudu and other species of wildlife were drawn to the area. Then it collapsed completely. The cattle had to be removed, as there was nothing left to eat. At the same time, the advanced project in the higher (35-inch) rainfall area suffered a similar fate. In the U.S., we put over 10,000 people through training, and I doubt ten percent succeeded more than modestly. Clearly, something was still missing if we were ever to see success that could be sustained.
I had expected all grazing systems and rotations to break down in brittle environments at some stage, because none of them catered for the many variables referred to above. But why was the planning process I had promoted so strongly, which overcame this weakness, also breaking down? After studying hundreds of cases on three continents, it became apparent the breakdowns were not the result of anything in the planning process per se, but due to other factors and complexities that never could be covered in a grazing plan. These included poor financial planning; social strife, such as divorce, family disagreement, and business succession; government regulations; the allure of reverting to former, more familiar, ways of doing things (the cause of both advanced project failures), and so on.
The long story of my own effort to track down the causes of the breakdowns in each case so we could avoid them in the future, is recounted in Holistic Management®: A New Framework for Decision Making (Island Press 1999).
In short, while each individual failure could be pinned on a financial, social or other factor, there was more to it than that. I had begun to recognize that the inconsistency in results—some succeeded, but most didn’t—was somehow connected to what was driving the people in each situation. Why, for instance, does a person give up so easily on a fitness program? We know that more exercise will lead to greater health, but millions of people buy running shoes and exercise machines, and fail to use them for more than a month or so. Why would the same managers who had experienced success with planned grazing for eight years in southern Africa drop the planning in favor of something that was more familiar, and thus easier, and watch the collapse without doing something about it?
The Beginnings of an Answer
We found what appears to be an answer in the process of developing Holistic Management®. Originally one began practicing Holistic Management® by first analyzing ecological processes in an attempt to improve their functioning, and thus restore the land to health. I had developed a number of management guidelines to help people accomplish this, and a few simple tests they could perform mentally to ensure the actions taken were appropriate for the situation. With experience came the realization of the futility of manipulating ecological processes without some idea of what we wanted to produce, and thus a production goal was defined. Soon after, we encountered the problem that afflicts so many other businesses, of production goals achieved at the expense of the environment that supports them.
Including a landscape goal was a major step forward, but still the people involved often argued to a standstill over production goals, and thus the desired landscape. Some time passed before it appeared that such conflict could only be resolved by finding a common vision, in terms of quality of life, from which to proceed. By including a quality of life statement in the goal that reflected what the people valued most, what they lived for, what made them want to get out of bed each morning, we gained the personal commitment needed to achieve whatever else had to be achieved.
We subsequently realized the three goals had to be combined into one comprehensive, holistic goal. Otherwise decisions could be made in support of one aspect, while damaging another. Once the people expressed what they wanted in terms of quality of life, they would know what they had to produce to create the outcome envisioned. Once they knew what they had to produce, they could begin to envision the sort of landscape that would sustain what they produced. "Production" in the holistic goal became "forms of production" when we saw that people were only including products that could be sold or consumed, and forgetting to include things like "meaningful work" or "an aesthetic environment," which would have to be produced to create the quality of life they envisioned.
Landscape became the future landscape when we found that people were describing the land as it was, not as it had to be if it was to sustain them several generations hence. And it became the future resource base when we realized we needed to include reference to the people who would be resources to us in achieving the holistic goal. The future resource base still encompassed the idea of a future landscape, but the land manager now also needed to describe the land in terms of how the basic processes at work in any ecosystem—water and mineral cycles, energy flow and community dynamics—would have to function.
The holistic goal helped us give order to the ideas I’ve covered to this point, resulting eventually in a new framework for management that outlined a process we could use for making the decisions so critical to management. All the decisions we made in planning how to reach the holistic goal, or in addressing problems or opportunities that arose along the way, were evaluated according to the same criteria we’d always used. In addition, however, we finally asked seven simple questions (those mental tests I referred to earlier) to ensure our decisions were socially, environmentally and economically sound and would lead us toward the holistic goal. In other words, any action taken to deal with a problem, to reach an objective, or to meet a basic need, should accomplish what was required, but should also enhance progress toward the holistic goal. To ensure that this happened, a feedback loop was established so that if monitoring showed the decision was not taking us where we wanted to go, we could act immediately to correct it.
This process is beginning to produce consistent results at last, as long as people share a deep commitment to achieving their holistic goal. Our successes have been most notable in three areas: conflict resolution, profitability (over 300% in at least one study) and measurable land improvement.
The Old versus the New
It only dawned on me much later that the way we make decisions, and have always made them, was ultimately responsible for the land deterioration we had been striving for so long to reverse. It was at the bottom of my many failures, and of the lack of success so many others had experienced. A summary of the essential differences between holistic decision making and conventional decision making should help you see what I finally saw.
In conventional decision making our decisions usually emanate from the desire or the need to meet a variety of goals or objectives. We only accept or consider the use of three "tools" with which to manage land—technology, fire and rest. To make sure our decisions about these tools, or any other actions contemplated, are in line with our goals or objectives, we will consider various criteria: past experience, expert opinion, research results, intuition, laws and regulations, cultural norms, political expediency, fear, peer pressure, cost effectiveness, profitability, compromise, and so on. If we are convinced the action we are contemplating will achieve the expected outcome we’ll go ahead with it. Generally, we assume we have made the right decision, although we can’t be sure until we see what actually happens.
When, on the other hand, we manage holistically, we first determine the extent of what we’re managing, or the "whole." This always includes the decision makers involved (anyone who makes decisions affecting management, including those with veto power over any decisions made), the physical resources available (including people), and the money on hand or that can be generated. The decision makers then form a holistic goal, and subsequently any number of shorter-term objectives. If they are managing land, particularly in brittle environments, they will add two additional tools to their toolbox: grazing and animal impact. They will base their decisions regarding these and all tools, as well as any other management options, on all the criteria they might have used conventionally, but now include an additional step. They will run any action proposed in the pursuit of an immediate objective through seven tests to ensure their decision is socially, environmentally and economically sound, both short and long term, in light of the holistic goal, not the objective. Finally, they monitor the results for the earliest signs of warning that the decision may be faulty so they can make a correction before damage is done. In other words, they don’t wait to see what happens, they make happen what they want to happen.
The process may sound complex, but no more that it would if I were attempting to describe how to ride a bicycle. In practice, once the idea is grasped, making decisions this way is no more time-consuming than before. Everyone now has a common focal point (the holistic goal) and sense of direction. They know how decisions will be evaluated and can see for themselves whether the resulting actions are likely to lead to the mutually desired outcome.
The Holistic Management®ä decision-making process has been under development for close to 40 years. Fortuitously, it coincides with the thinking of many scientists and others today who are publicly acknowledging the need for humans to think and manage more holistically.
One Decision at a Time
I believe we can create rangelands in the West that once again support a vast array of life, healthy soils, and stable water systems, but we can only do it one decision at a time. Two requirements have to be met. People at the grassroots must be empowered, through education, training and community support, to manage holistically in each situation, as all situations (or wholes) are unique. However, because these people are compelled to operate under policies emanating from various institutions that prescribe what they can and cannot do on the land, it is essential that these policies be holistically sound. Sound policies, involving a decentralization of decision-making, education and training, would enhance the ability of people at the grassroots to make socially, environmentally and economically sound decisions. Today, far too many policies preclude this.
Unfortunately, research and experience indicates that it is always a very long time before new thinking becomes mainstream enough for institutions headed by democratically-elected leaders, and supported by a bureaucracy, to adopt the new thinking. In fact, it can run to hundreds of years. This slowness of adoption is understandable. Standing in the way of any democratic bureaucracy to adopt new thinking is a minefield of conflicting views, institutional and private egos, deep beliefs, traditions, differing objectives and goals, feelings and fears, as well as personal and institutional agendas. Only when the new thinking has stepped through that minefield successfully and recovered from every false step and attack, does it become mainstream and thus accepted by institutions.
Speeding Acceptance
That we can ill afford this slow and tortuous pace when it comes to the need to manage holistically, is highlighted by the state of the soils on our rangelands, as well as in our forests and croplands. Despite the greatest concentration of scientists ever known in one nation, eroding soil is America’s greatest annual export—greater in weight and value than all grain, timber, meat, weapons, and commercial and intellectual property exports. Flooding, a symptom of desertification, is now the leading weather-related cause of death in the U.S. How can we, faced with these alarming facts, adopt new ideas more speedily?
When every ranch, farm, forest, public land and community is unique, and when there are so many variables and such a cacophony of views, goals, objectives, different environments and community needs, there is clearly no one answer. And no one solution. No people will forever accept a solution imposed on their community through laws, regulations, or the views of single-issue pressure groups. The human spirit and our innate compulsion to make decisions in our own self-interest preclude it, other than for short periods.
Holistic Management® provides a framework that recognizes and accounts for the uniqueness of each situation. It enables people to find the solutions appropriate to their needs at any given moment, as they must, because today’s solution is often not tomorrow’s. Centralized planning and regulation can never do this, as James C. Scott, so tellingly points out in Seeing Like a State (Yale University Press, 1998).
As much as our institutions will have to change, they cannot lead a change to holistic decision making. By definition democratically elected leaders cannot lead, other than in crisis or war, but must always follow the will of the majority. That means the change to holistic decision making has to start at the grassroots.
The deterioration of America’s rangelands that has occurred over the last 10,000 years, is so extensive, it is beyond the power of any institution to handle. So great is the challenge of restoring them now that only ordinary people can do it—you and I—ranchers, farmers, foresters, range managers, teachers, parents, business people or whatever we are outside our institutional or social identities. Until each of us individually begins to change the way we make decisions there won't be a sufficient groundswell of opinion to make it safe for elected leaders to change the way they make decisions. Fortunately, that groundswell is beginning to build.
Excerpted from Ranching West of the 100th Meridian: Culture, Ecology, and Economics, Richard Knight, Wendell C. Gilgert, and Ed Marston, eds. Copyright © 2002 Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C. and Covelo, California. All rights reserved. Paperback $25.00 ISBN 1-55963-827-3 Hardcover $50.00 ISBN 1-55963-826-5
To order Ranching West of the 100th Meridian, please call Island Press at (800) 828-1302 or place your order at the Island Press website www.islandpress.org.
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