Rangelands, Volume 22, Number 1 (February 2000)

Abstract

RANGELANDS 22(1)The Wild Life of Allan Savory C.J. HadleyReprinted from the Fall issue of Range Magazine, 1999. This Rhodesian biologist has been spreading the gospel of holistic management to the masses on several continents. Some respond to his message. Others deny his successes and ridicule his changes of mind. Is this extraordinary man a genius or simply a contradiction? Is he saving the world or frightening scientists?Allan Savory is a botanist and zoologist with a history as varied as the flora and fauna of the country in which he was born. Rhodesia was a white ruled British territory and when he was a member of the Rhodesia Party Savory broke ranks, crossed the aisle and worked for the black vote. Soon after, he had to flee the country in fear of his life.He landed in Texas in the early '70s, now lives in New Mexico, but for most of his 63 years, this maverick has been wandering wild places trying to stop desertification, which is a symptom of a worldwide and deadly serious loss of biodiversity."As a youngster, my only aim was to live in the African bush forever." He had that opportunity but ended up "forsaking it in order to work toward saving the wildlife that was my reason for being in the bush. Even in the wildest areas, the land was deteriorating, in fact turning to desert, rendering it ever less able to support life of any kind. I was determined to find a way to reverse this process."He worked as a biologist, soldier, public servant, member of parliament, president of a political party, farmer, rancher, consultant. "Throughout that," says Savory, "there was constantly just one theme-poor land means poor people, social upheaval, political unrest. We farmers and ranchers have destroyed more civilizations than armies have done. Armies change civilizations. We farmers and ranchers destroy them, they never rise again. And I've been obsessed with this problem of why this is happening, why i t ' s happened for 10-15,000 years, and why we've never been able to stop it.Biodiversity loss, caused by humans, is taking place at a faster rate than any time in history. "Desertification is a symptom of the loss of biodiversity caused by overloading the air through the burning of fossil fuels, biomass burning, chemicals, fertilizer, agriculture, pollution, burning of national parks and forests," says Savory. "Scientists only have three toolsrest, technology and fire, so they try to justify fire when technology fails, but no fire lit by a human being is natural. Put those three together and those are now threatening not just trees and birds and fish, these are now threatening human survival."Savory's quest took him a surprising route. He was compelled to work with farmers and ranchers, whose management he believed was responsible for initiating the deterioration. He's on public record in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as saying, "Let's shoot every damn cow and any bloody rancher that stands in the way" because he could see no point of being in the army, and defending his nation, when ranchers were raping it behind him. "My ...