Special Report COWS CAN SAVE THE WORLD - RANGE magazinerangemagazine.com/features/summer-15/range-su15-sr-cows_save_… · 42 • RANGE MAGAZINE • SUMMER 2015 Public Belief Scientists

SUMMER 2015 • RANGE MAGAZINE • 41

The recent RANGE article featuringNevada rancher Cliven Bundy(whose cattle were taken from hissouthern Nevada range by the BLMbacked up by SWAT teams) typifies

the western ranching cultural genocide takingplace. It is a tragedy based on deeply heldmyths and assumptions rather than on anyknown science.

No publication has done more than RANGE,valiantly fighting for fairness and the rights ofranchers in the protracted rancher-federalagency war over western public lands. Whendecent human beings—including ranchers, envi-ronmentalists and government land managerswho are doing the best they can—all wanthealthy land with abundant wildlife, flowingrivers, stable rural families and communities in ahealthy thriving nation, solutions and collabora-tion are needed instead of conflict.

How easy it is to draw our swords and yethow difficult it is to re-sheath them. So let mestart with a point that I believe all parties canagree upon: management including policyshould be based on science rather than on emo-tion, belief and assumption. With that in mind,let’s look at the current situation. Because theultimate form of land degradation is man-madedesert, I will use the official jargon and call theprocess rangeland desertification.

Desertification typically does not occurwhere precipitation and humidity are fairly wellspread throughout the year, as in many coastalareas like Florida and Washington. However,most western rangelands experience long dryperiods whether rainfall is high or low and heredesertification occurs on both private and publiclands. The symptoms of desertification are:increasingly frequent and severe droughts andfloods, poverty, social breakdown, mass emigra-tion to cities or across borders, decreasingwildlife, pastoral culture genocide, and violenceand conflict. Most of these are being experiencedin America today despite the good intentions ofboth ranchers and policy-makers.

Special Report

COWS CAN SAVE THE WORLDI write to offer a constructive way forward in the tragic cultural genocide unfolding in America’s

wonderful western ranching culture that is embedded in the nation’s culture. I do so knowing the risks of trying to help a lion by operating on a back molar in its jaw.

By Allan Savory

How easy it is to draw our swords and yet how difficult it is to re-sheath them.

Management including policy should be based on sciencerather than on emotion, belief and assumption.

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Public BeliefScientists advising U.S. lawmakers areemployed by institutions, universities, gov-ernment agencies, and in some cases largeenvironmental nongovernmental organiza-tions (NGOs). Universally they advise strictcontrols on livestock numbers to preventdesertification caused by overgrazing. Somespecial-interest groups desire the completeremoval of domestic livestock from publiclands. Institutional beliefs always reflect thesociety, so let’s begin with what the publicbelieves: (1) The western rangelands aredeteriorating (desertifying) because thereare too many cattle; (2) Riparian areasimportant for wildlife and aesthetics aredamaged by cattle; (3) Finishing cattle withcorn in factory feedlots is inhumane andleads to excessive water use, pollution,diversion of grain from human use, andexcessive use of antibiotics resultingin superbugs; and (4) Cattle areresponsible for climate changethrough methane emission.

About 35 years ago I wrote anarticle entitled “Ranchers may haveto go but their cattle will need tostay.” That is still true today. Ranchersare losing the war against policies,laws and regulations founded onpublic perception, and America islosing generations of ranching fami-lies and their communities. The ulti-

mate tragedy will occur when science pre-vails over beliefs and government agencieseventually have to run millions more cattleon these lands to reverse the desertificationprocess. To prevent such tragedy we need to

collaborate based on scienceand common desire now.Having trained thousands

of officials in policy develop-ment, I’ve learned that there isonly one reason policies aredeveloped and that is toaddress a perceived or actualproblem. Range managementpolicy is made to address theproblem of widespread rangedegradation or desertification.Political and economic powerhas shifted to cities and politi-cians who do not know whatto do are advised by experts(often by academics and civilservants) and are influencedby pressure-group lobbyists. Itis the deep beliefs of suchinstitutional professionaladvisors as well as lobbyiststhat determine policy. So it isthose beliefs about the causeof desertification that we need

to look at and understand.Desertification is the result of noneffec-

tive rainfall, a term I coined 50 years agowhen my country’s government in Rhodesia(now called Zimbabwe) proclaimed a severedrought when, as a government researcher, Ihad observed it was the sixth highest rainfallever and that Mozambique, lower on thesame river system, was suffering severe flood-ing. Clearly something was askew.

Noneffective rain flows across the soilsurface or evaporates from exposed soil sur-faces, leading to drought and/or floods.Effective rain soaks into soil and only leaves itby flowing through the soil to rivers, wet-lands or underground aquifers or into grow-ing plants. For years I demonstrated theeffectiveness of rainfall to ranchers by pour-ing a set amount of water on different condi-tion land and timing its disappearance. A

recent YouTube video by NRCS(http://youtu.be/IqB4z7lGzsg) pro-vides the best demonstration I haveseen of rainfall infiltration. Rainfallwas absorbed 42 times faster onhealthier rangeland and 181 timesfaster than on cropland.

Desertification results when landmanagement increases the amountof bare soil. Keeping soil surfacescovered with plant life and deadplant litter is critical to increasingthe effectiveness of precipitation

The ultimate tragedy will occur when science

prevails over beliefs andgovernment agencieseventually have to runmillions more cattle on

these lands to reverse thedesertification process. To prevent such tragedywe need to collaboratebased on science andcommon desire now.

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Barefoot Allan watches herders move the cattle, sheep and goats as one land- and wildlife-management herd. Such herdmoves have been planned months in advance using Holistic Planned Grazing. BELOW: Bunched cattle managed well resultin a healthier biodiverse resource.

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(either rainfall or snowmelt). If just one inchof rain was made more effective in NewMexico where I live part time, it would beequivalent every year to three full dams thesize of Elephant Butte, New Mexico’s largestdam. Such water accumulating in soil annu-ally, as it formerly did, explains how earlyAmericans enjoyed an irrigation-based civi-lization in New Mexico in what is today vir-tually desert.

Stocking RatesDoes enforcing the “officially correct”stocking rate through policy lead tohealthy, vibrant rangelands? Let’s look atthe evidence.

If lower stocking rates prevent overgraz-ing, then no grazing should be ideal, as somelobbyists desire. Chaco Canyon NationalPark in New Mexico had livestock removedabout 80 years ago and with no overgrazingof any plants the situation got worse. (Seephoto at right.)

There are many examples of active deser-tification in government research plotsacross western U.S. rangelands that wereestablished to provide evidence that remov-ing livestock would solve the problem. Allplots that I have inspected—together withgovernment officials and land-grant facul-ty—show less effective rainfall and thusdesertification. In more than 60 years ofresearch, neither I nor any collaborating sci-entists have found any evidence to supportthe idea that controlling livestock numbersprevents desertification.

Let’s look a bit deeper into the stockingrate/overgrazing relationship. We believeovergrazing is caused by too many animalson the land and that overgrazing causesdesertification. This ancient belief is so deepin society that it has assumed institutionalscientific validity. Reading thousands of dis-sertations and papers, I have not found a sin-gle one that defined overgrazing. No onewould define what everyone knewwas a fact.

Fortunately, 60 years ago, a French pas-ture scientist named André Voisin discov-ered that overgrazing had nothing to dowith animal numbers. Plants were damagedif grazed too frequently, but when grazedinfrequently they thrived. Time of exposureand reexposure to grazing and not animalnumbers governs whether plants are over-grazed or not. Published in four major lan-guages and never refuted, the science hasbeen clear for a long time but institutionalbelief in western land-grant universities

training policy advisors did not change.This now poses the question, why does

stopping any overgrazing by removing live-stock cause severe desertification? If ourbeliefs are correct, then no overgrazing at allshould not result in desertification. However,it does, even in riparian areas close to water. Ilive a quarter mile from the Aldo LeopoldMemorial Forest on the Rio Grande River.Thousands of people visit this commemora-tion of Leopold and his land ethic. Because

of beliefs, what the publicand the endorsing organi-zations are blind to is thehealth of the land desertify-ing, as you can see in thephoto at left.

Far From PristineComplete removal of graz-ers accelerates desertifica-tion because two thingshappen. First, most or allaboveground stems andleaves of perennial grassesdie back every year. Unliketrees that also have leafturnover, grasses cannotshed dead leaves and stems.Over millions of years suchgrasslands—soil life, plants,grazing animals and theirpredators—developedtogether in an amazing

symbiotic relationship. The grasses neededanimals grazing, trampling, dunging andurinating just as much as the animals neededplants. Past numbers of animals are todayunimaginable to us. Early pioneers like Lewisand Clark wrote of millions of bison, butthose were only remnants of past species andnumbers. What Lewis and Clark described aspristine land was far from pristine.

Perhaps there is another reason societycould not see such obvious desertification

Severe desertification in Chaco Canyon National Park in New Mexico. No livestock have been on this groundfor 80 years. With no overgrazing or grazing of plants desertification is as severe as anything in Africa.

Oxidizing dying grassland in Aldo Leopold Memorial Forest on the RioGrande River in Albuquerque, N.M. The grass plants providing most soilcover in seasonally dry regions such as western rangelands are conspicu-ous by their absence and those few still existing are largely dead, black andbreaking down chemically (oxidation). Fifty or more species that shouldbe here have died out along with most wildlife. If Leopold were alivetoday, he would be horrified to see a riparian forest desertifying in hishonor. But thousands of people trail through this nature preserve everyyear, blindly believing all such conservation is good and has to be the bestnature can do.

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conflicting with beliefs. Most of America’s350 million people live along the East andWest coasts where there is more evenly dis-tributed humidity. In these regions biologi-cal decay of annually dying abovegroundgrass leaves and stems is rapid enough toprevent dead plant material oxidizing insunlight leading to soil exposure betweenplants. In such environments, resting theland is the most powerful thing we can doto restore biodiversity and full functioningof our environment.

Gradual oxidation weakens and killsmost perennial grass plants because it pre-vents adequate sunlight from reachinggrowth points at ground level. This is out ofharm’s way from grazing animals the plantsevolved with symbiotically. Dying leaves andstems need to decay before the next growingseason, clearing the way for sunlight to reachgrowth points. As grasslandsweaken, nature strives to fill avacuum so the communityshifts generally to taprootplants—weeds or forbs,shrubs and trees if rainfall ishigh enough, or algae/lichencrusts and desert busheswhere rainfall is lower. All toooften the plants with whichnature is trying to fill the vac-uum are institutionally callednoxious or invasive.

In summary, oxidation of perennialgrasses must be prevented in seasonally dryenvironments. When either ranchers or poli-cy-makers reduce animal numbers to try to

prevent overgrazing ofplants, it not only fails,but it leads to moreplants oxidizing anddying. This is why vastareas of rangeland fromwestern California toEast Texas and fromMexico to Montana aredominated by rest-toler-ant grass species of low

productivity and not the highly productivesoil-building, animal-dependent grasses ofthe past.

Today rangeland as a whole is overrested.This is because there are not enough herds

providing very high periodic animalimpact—trampling, dunging and urinat-ing—to keep plants alive and soil surfacesbetween plants covered. Because this was anew concept—land with animals grazingbut overrested—I had to give it a name andcalled it partial rest. Partial rest—animals onthe land grazing but in such low numbersand scattered that the bulk of the land rest-ed—is the norm on both public and privateland consequently desertifying. And as wehave learned such partial rest is almost asdamaging as total rest as we see in Navajofence line photo at left.

Over thousands of years humans learnedthey could keep grass plants alive by annuallyburning off the dying leaves and stems.Today we call this “prescribed fire” becausescientists approve of it. This clears the way soadequate sunlight can reach growth points.

However, fire, no matter how expertly pre-scribed, also burns the plant material neededfor soil cover so rain becomes less effective,advancing desertification. Fire also putsenormous amounts of pollutants into theatmosphere and leads to a plant communitydominated by plants dependent on fire pro-viding the optimum microenvironment forseedling establishment.

Because the belief that grasslands needfire to thrive is as widespread as our beliefthat overgrazing is caused by too many ani-mals, let’s look at an example of a grasslandkept alive using fire instead of animals. Thepicture (p. 45) is a grassland in South Africain a seasonally dry environment that has very

Tree planting with drip irrigation in the United Arab Emirates cost $30 billion for one percent of its landbut desertification continues unabated. No amount of planting trees or grasses can replace the role ofanimals in maintaining biological decay essential to grass plants to address desertification. BELOW: Allanin dense grassland along river resulting from increasing cattle greatly with Holistic Planned Grazing.

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ABOVE: On the left side of this fence, the Navajo land is said to be abused and overgrazed by the very fewNavajo sheep present. The national park wilderness land on the right has been managed to the best ofwestern scientists’ knowledge with no plants overgrazed and total rest of the land from livestock for 80years. These two totally different treatments offer the same result—desertification. Excessive rest—partial on the left and total on the right—is the dominant influence leading to such severe desertification.Partial rest is what occurs over most U.S. rangelands—too few animals not functioning with movingherd behavior as they evolved to do in symbiotic relationship with soil life and plants.

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few cattle on it each year. The average annualprecipitation is about 21 inches and it under-goes periodic burning to prevent it fromshifting to woody plants and weeds. Theextensive flooding seen below in KrugerNational Park results from the runoff ofrainfall from such extensive “excellent” grass-lands in the upper river tributaries.

Clearly using fire in order to keep season-ally dry grasslands alive is a major contribu-tor to decreased effectiveness of rain andthus desertification, although it does removethe dead slowly oxidizing plant materialkeeping most grass plants alive.

What other tools do we have to preventoxidation in such grasslands? Resting theland partially by reducing livestock numbersleads to the problem and fire exacerbates italthough often reducing woody plants. Wehave only technology left for us to use in itsmany forms—chemicals, piping water,machinery, etc. As a consequence, a greatmany technological interventions have beentried involving billions of dollars in costs.

The United Arab Emirates has done anamazing job of tree planting with drip irriga-tion and desalination of sea water, spendingover $30 billion on one percent of its land,but the desert simply keeps advancing (seephoto at left).

In Israel, in the largely man-madeNegev Desert, government policy enforcesreduction in the ancient pastoral Bedouintribe sheep numbers. To compensate forlost livelihoods Bedouin men are paid anallowance based on the number of childrenthey father and families are being settled inconstructed towns. I had dinner with themayor of one of these towns and he told methe average age of his citizens is 12 years, aninevitable result of paying men based onhow many children they can father. Whileremoving the sheep the Israelis are spend-ing over 4,000 Euros per acre planting treeswith no more chance of stopping the deser-tification than the UAE.

Over the western rangelands of Americastate and federal governments have spentuncountable billions of dollars using variousmachines and chemicals to no avail. I amafraid no technology can ever replace biolog-ical decay every year over billions of acres.

What then can be done to manage ourpublic and private lands to regenerate theland, rivers, aquifers, wildlife and rural com-munities while preventing Bundy-typearmed conflicts? After all, this is what allAmericans want.

Time to Regenerate We have to recognize that it was not livestockcausing the problem; it was the way we man-aged them for centuries. And it is our man-agement that has to change on private andpublic lands. Parts of our 400 million acres ofpublic lands are in reasonable conditionwhere humidity is better distributed. Unfor-tunately, most public lands lie in regions oflong dry periods and often low rainfall. Thatpublic lands like the Aldo Leopold MemorialForest are in generally worse condition thanmost private ranching land is because of thestrict policies institutions place on animal

numbers leading to greater rest and thusdesertification.

When I first questioned the effectivenessof management methods 60 years ago, Istruggled because of my university trainingas an ecologist. As Henry George said in1878: “Habits of thought are even moretyrannous than habits of the body. Theymake for the masses of men a mental atmos-phere out of which they can no more risethan out of the physical atmosphere.”

I used to detest domestic livestockbecause I was trained to believe they causeddesertification, and it was after all “so obvi-

This would be considered an exceptionally good grassland, far better than on most private and publicland. However, the cancer of desertification begins with the soil surface between plants. The soil cover inthis “excellent” grassland in South Africa shows that it is bare and exposed between plants (BELOW LEFT).It is covered with a crust almost as hard as concrete reducing rainfall infiltration into the soil resulting inhigh runoff of water and also evaporation from the soil surface. BELOW RIGHT: The extensive flooding seenbelow in Kruger National Park results from the runoff of rainfall from such extensive “excellent”grasslands in the upper river tributaries.

“Habits of thought are even more tyrannous thanhabits of the body. They make for the masses of mena mental atmosphere out of which they can no more

rise than out of the physical atmosphere.”—HENRY GEORGE, 1878

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ous.” In the 1960s, realizing there was nooption but to learn how to use livestockproperly managed to reverse desertification,I faced a dilemma. How do we do that? Noone knew how it could be done. For thou-sands of years, ancient pastoral tribes hadbunched and herded their animals with greatknowledge of the land. That had resulted inthe great man-made deserts of the biblicallands right across North Africa to India andChina. Then we had the development ofmodern range science limiting stocking ratesand designing many rotational and othergrazing systems. But these, as we firstobserved in Africa then confirmed in Ameri-ca, accelerated desertification where grass-lands had long dry periods.Voisin had provided a clue from his

research highlighting why rotational grazing,although not leading to desertification in themore humid environments, was producingsuch poor results in Europe. He had con-cluded that some form of planning processwas needed to replace all rotational andother grazing systems and he developedRational (not rotational) Grazing—a processof planning grazing using maps and calen-dar with timing based on recovery periodsrather than grazing periods.I tried Voisin’s Rational Grazing on

ranches in Africa but ran into problems inthe more seasonally erratic environments

and greater diversity of plants and animalsincluding wildlife. Fortunately I realizedVoisin was not wrong, but that rangelandsneeded a better planning process that couldhandle greater complexity. I began looking atother professions eventually discoveringwhat I sought in Britain’s Sandhurst MilitaryAcademy where they had built on centuriesof experience in planning whilst in the chaosof intense battlefield situations. Adaptingtheir planning processes required hardly anychange but there was another problem. Bat-tles last a short time while ranchers have toplan for months and years catering to differ-ent seasons, different soils, erratic rainfall,wildlife, crops, different types of livestock,other uses on the land, and more. This wassolved by planning on a large chart on whichseveral dimensions of time, area, number ofanimals, wildlife needs, cropping, etc., couldall be plotted, and then finally the moves ofthe livestock could be plotted to get the ani-mals in the right place, at the right time, forthe right reason, and with the right behaviorto affect plants and soil life. Today we aretraining illiterate people in Third Worldcountries to do this planning.

Holistic Planned GrazingOver the years I was able to develop whattoday is known as Holistic Planned Graz-ing. This is a profoundly simple but thor-

ough decision-making and planningprocess that uses currently known scienceto ensure that the full complexity of peo-ple’s culture, the environment, and econo-my are addressed, and in which cattle andother livestock are used as the main tool toregenerate the land, river flow, aquifers andwildlife. This is described in my short book“The Grazing Revolution,” available fromAmazon for $1.99. Holistic Management involves the overall

management of complexity in any situa-tion—from the ranch to government policylevel—using currently known science inplace of beliefs. Then if livestock are neededto regenerate the land, the Holistic PlannedGrazing process is used to accomplish that.Once the holistic framework was in place in1984, results became consistent and replica-ble and the practice has now spread to about50 million acres on six continents. As usualnot all including myself do things as well aswe would like, but as long as people are usingthe holistic framework to guide manage-ment, improved results show within days tomonths. Today data are pouring in frommany ranchers and scientists in universities,government agencies, and environmentalorganizations, all collaborating globally in anexpanding network of locally led and man-aged learning and training hubs affiliatedthrough the Savory Institute.

Tony Malmberg ensuring land is not partially rested to deteriorate by concentrating his cattle while in a large paddock on the ranch in Wyoming. The moves of this herd are planned on a grazing chart months in advance, always ensuring plants are not overgrazed while the land is heavily impacted bythe animals with their hooves, dung and urine to lead to healthy rangeland.

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In short, we have known how to regener-ate the land reversing desertification since1984 and have not experienced any failure inany country where the process is practiced.So why is adoption by political policy-mak-ers and government agencies so slow?During the early 1980s, two far-sighted,

caring Soil Conservation Service officials inNew Mexico—Don Sylvester and RayMargo—persuaded the USDA to establishan Interagency Committee that engaged meto provide training in Holistic Management.In all, some 2,000 officials, scientists and aca-demics participated from the Bureau ofLand Management, U.S. Forest Service,Bureau of Indian Affairs, Natural ResourcesConservation Service, U.S. Fish & WildlifeService, World Bank, U.S. Agency for Inter-national Development (USAID), and fromwestern land-grant universities. They wentthrough a week of training learning to usethe holistic framework in management andpolicy, bringing hundreds of their own poli-cies on which to work. They discovered thatevery one of their policies was addressingsymptoms and thus likely to fail and lead tounintended consequences. One group intraining made a unanimous statement that Irecorded: “We can now see that unsoundresource management is universal in theUnited States.”I was in discussion with USDA to train

more than 15,000 officials when furthertraining was banned by the newly appointedchief of the Soil Conservation Service, Texasrancher Wilson Scaling. Members of theInteragency Committee told me they werepowerless to prevent the ban and appealed tome to keep the work alive because they con-sidered it “vital to the future of the UnitedStates.” I mention this history becausebureaucrats are often vilified as much as cat-tle are and I have found individuals as caringand concerned as any rancher.

Systems ScienceTo understand this behavior, I began study-ing research in fields other than ecology.From systems science, social research andhistory I learned that this was normal insti-tutional behavior that has not changed sinceGalileo’s time.Systems science recognizes different sys-

tems. “Hard systems” are everything wemake from the clothes we wear to spaceexploration vehicles, our magnificent cities,bridges, planes, computers and more. Hardsystems involve the use of technology in

some form and they do what we designthem to do. If parts are broken or batteriesare flat they do not work because they arenot self-organizing. They do not do unex-pected things or have what are calledunplanned properties. When problems dooccur they are relatively easy to solve and arecalled “kind problems.”Then there are “soft systems” and these

are human organizations—cattlemen’s orga-nizations, universities, government agencies,NGOs, churches, etc. These generally dowhat they are designed to do efficiently. Theywork if people are missing because they areself-organizing. They also have “unplannedemergent properties,” meaning they dothings we do not expect and cannot antici-pate. When problems occur they can bealmost impossible to solve and are called“wicked problems.” Lastly, there are “natural systems” that

have similar characteristics to soft systemsexcept they are not designed or made by

humans. Nature is the best example.Let me now pose some questions which

may seem unanswerable because theyinvolve unplanned, emergent, wicked prob-lems. No organizations are immune. Whyafter many people in government agenciesand universities helped develop HolisticManagement, and there was high demandfor further training, did the USDA ban fur-ther participation? Why are we still seeingsuch things as the BLM bringing in SWATteams to enforce destocking? Why, whenthousands of professionals have known foryears that management policies areunsound, are we still spending over a billiondollars every year to eradicate noxious plantswhen not a single species has ever been erad-icated over 50-odd years? Why are govern-ment policies causing increasingly severedroughts and floods when we have knownfor years how to reduce them using properlymanaged livestock? Why is such slowness forpolicies to change costing American taxpay-ers many billions of dollars annually inter-nally and in USAID and foreign policy? Whois being evil, who is being bad or has any illintent? No one.The answer to these questions is found in

wicked problems of soft systems—ouressential institutions. I believe it is time tobegin understanding wicked problemsaffecting cattlemen’s organizations as much

Same creek in a sagebrush steppe environment taken moments apart from a bridge. The left side ismanaged holistically and has an estimated 250 percent more stocking rate than the land on theright. BELOW: Overnight lion-proof kraal where 500 head of cattle are held each night for a weekbefore the kraal moves with the constantly moving cattle. When placed on crop fields, such kraalslead to great increases in production.

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as government agencies, universities andenvironmental organizations.

The first wicked problem is that organi-zations are not able to adopt new counter-intuitive scientific insights ahead of publicopinion. No amount of data, proof, evi-dence, money spent, or how many peopledying will bring about institutional changeuntil a significant level of public opinionchanges.

Organizations reflect public opinion.When that changes, organizations change.This is obscured because organizations tendto lead in adopting new ideas not conflictingwith public perception—hence they have thelatest technology, computers, software, etc.American universities led when they devel-oped giant machines to mimic animals toreverse desertification because the publicbelieved in technology. Governments spendvast sums using technology without ques-tion because everyone believes in technology.However, organizations lead the oppositionand ridicule when new paradigm-shiftingscientific insights occur. This is why not asingle cattlemen’s organization has ever sup-ported Holistic Planned Grazing any morethan government agencies could.

Checking the PastLet’s look at historically documented cases.Britain’s Royal Navy, led by brilliant minds,did not officially accept that lime juice wouldend scurvy until 200 years after it was firstdemonstrated by James Lancaster while thiswas vital to Britain’s empire. All this whilemany ships’ captains began changing indi-vidually. A million sailors died. The institu-tional persecution of Galileo is history as isthe persecution of the Hungarian doctorIgnaz Semmelweis who, before bacteria wereknown to exist, discovered that washing hishands after cutting up corpses and beforegoing into maternity wards saved women’slives. He was persecuted by his institutionalpeers and died in a mental asylum.

No organizations are immune to thistragic wicked problem of complex soft sys-tems. Thousands of decent people in govern-ment agencies and environmental

organizations all want healthier land, thriv-ing communities and abundant wildlife butthey are powerless to change their organiza-tions ahead of a shift in public opinion. Ihave not been able to find a single case inhistory where new insights have been institu-tionally accepted ahead of a significant shiftin public opinion. This was further con-

firmed for me when I achieved more in a 20-minute TED talk going viral to shift publicopinion to accepting that management notlivestock is the cause of desertification than Iand thousands of others were able to achieveover 50 years of struggle against institutionalrejection of the same idea.

If we are to end the senseless conflictbetween government agencies enforcingflawed policies on ranch families, two thingswill be needed. First, a shift in public percep-tion from blaming livestock for causing thedegradation of public lands to blaming man-agement by ranchers and government agen-cies through flawed policies, laws andregulations. In fact, it is time to end theblaming, period. Just as fast as public percep-tion can change, so too can cattlemen’s orga-nizations and government agencies, so whatchange is needed? First, that without usinglivestock properly managed the regenerationof public lands cannot take place using allthe technology even imaginable. Second,policies resulting in legally enforced manage-ment need to be developed holistically,embracing science.

As soon as public perception shifts signifi-cantly, we will see institutions change. Thenpolicies that achieve almost 100 percent pub-lic support will no longer address only symp-toms, but the real causes of desertification.When this milestone is reached, ranchers,agencies, and environmental organizationswill no longer waste billions of dollars annu-ally but will be collaborating in the rehabilita-tion of public lands. ■

Allan Savory lives in Albuquerque, N.M., andnear Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Africa. Hegave six talks in California last spring: “Inseveral I made it very clear and unarguablescientifically that only cattle and other live-stock properly managed can now save civiliza-tion as we know it. I also made it clear thatvegans are welcome to be vegans if they believeit good for their health or for religious reasons.But if they are doing so for ethical or environ-mental reasons they are unintentionally doinggreat harm and endangering humanity.”To contact, go to www.savoryinstitute.org orwww.achmonline.org.

If we are to end thesenseless conflict between

government agenciesenforcing flawed policieson ranch families, twothings will be needed.First, a shift in public

perception from blaminglivestock for causing thedegradation of public

lands to blaming manage-ment by ranchers andgovernment agencies

through flawed policies,laws and regulations.

In fact, it is time to endthe blaming, period.

Allan with wife, Jody Butterfield, in Zimbabwe.After decades of work, he finally got it right.

Special Report“COWS CAN SAVE THE WORLD”

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Special Report COWS CAN SAVE THE WORLD - RANGE magazinerangemagazine.com/features/summer-15/range-su15-sr-cows_save_… · 42 • RANGE MAGAZINE • SUMMER 2015 Public Belief Scientists