A message sent by M. Michael CROWN :

http://www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com/savory1.htm

HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT VS DESERTIFICATION AND FAMINE

AN EXAMPLE OF GREAT SUCCESS IN AFRICA

…A number of ranchers in the United States as well as many in Australia have adopted Holistic Management and its associated planned grazing. They have shown this principle of using grazing as a tool to reclaim and revitalize the land to be correct wherever properly used. Without adequate animal numbers and biodiversity, water and vegetation decrease. Holistic Management-planned grazing is an ecologically sound tool that can be used in even the most primitive circumstances.

…All of this land improvement was done using a large mixed herd of mainly cattle and goats, but with a few sheep, donkeys, pigs and horses, and one tame elephant joining the herd some days. (We plan to add more elephants to the herd in future.) No range management action was taken other than to increase animal numbers significantly and use holistic planned grazing (as opposed to rotational or management intensive grazing).

In this case, we use one herd and no fencing. The herd is held overnight in a moveable ãlion-proofä kraal (livestock pen), and leaves at dawn to graze according to the plan. After the allotted time in one area of the ranch, the herd, together with the lion-proof kraal, is moved to another area. This procedure is necessary, as we have no desire to kill predators so essential to healthy wildlife and plant communities. Some readers may be aware of the reduction in vegetative damage along riparian areas of Yellowstone National Park since the reintroduction of wolves. As I have often expressed, predators are necessary to change the behavior of their prey and its relationship to the soil and vegetation, or we have to handle the livestock in a manner mimicking that of old under-predation threat.

Most of the cattle were obtained by offering cattle owners on the communal land grazing and care of their animals to save them from the perennial ãdroughtä and almost certain death they were suffering under the same rainfall. Some of these cattle owners recently stated to Roland Bunch, who had been engaged to independently investigate, that had they not been able to send their animals to the ranch, they would have none left today.

… This picture was taken in as near as could be ascertained the same spot as photo 7. It shows the same Setaria grass growing as it normally should. Bare ground is largely a thing of the past; hence the river is flowing once more.
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