healthy land. sustainable future.
November / December 2007 January / February 2006
Number 116 Number 105
Biological Masticators to the Rescue
www.holisticmanagement.org www.holisticmanagement.org
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
ALLAN SAVORY
by Ann Adams
A
nyone who has ever met Bill Burrows knows he is a man of seemingly infinite energy. His energy and enthusiasm for life and the work he does is contagious. So you’d think it would have been of little surprise to know that at age 70, Bill is still the coordinator of the 40,000-acre (16,000-ha) Sunflower Coordinated Resource Management Plan (SCRMP). But the scope of work within that plan and the coordination of so many agencies are nothing short of amazing. For Bill Burrows and his biological masticators it’s just another day on the job.
A Slow Start The SCRMP is a chaparral belt beginning 25 miles (40 km) west of Red Bluff, California with elevations from 900-5,500 feet (300-1,833 m). The SCRMP began in 1977 after a catastrophic fire burned 80,000 acres (32,000 ha). A CRMP is a landowner-driven process established to achieve environmental enhancement on a landscape basis.
A memorandum of understanding is developed and signed by landowners and their agency partners. So while the fire had sparked enough interest to actually create a CRMP in 1977, the enthusiasm and follow through waned for the work until 2002 when Bill Burrows took the lead and introduced Holistic Management. As Bill tells the story, “We sent out an invitation to all the landowners in the early months of 2002 asking the question: ‘Do we want to make our area fire safe and productive far into the future?’ We got all sorts of people attending from Buddhists who lived in San Francisco but owned 900 acres nearby to someone who was asked to leave his cross-draw automatic pistols in his pickup.” Bill facilitated that first meeting and worked hard to achieve the best possible outcome. “Thank goodness for my training in Holistic Management,” he says. “I also used Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Bob Chadwick’s Consensus-Building. The only firm agenda item was a question written on a flipchart: ‘Do we want to improve our quality of life, develop profitability, and provide for a safe and productive environment?’ “After 45 minutes of confused interaction, and being continually referred back to the question
Moving governments toward sustainability requires holistically designed policies. Allan Savory has worked for more than fifty years on the major environmental problems and their associated violence in much of Africa from the perspectives of a scientist, soldier, researcher, international consultant, and politician. To learn more about his ideas on how to create sound policy, turn to page four.
FEATURE STORIES Governing for Sustainability ALLAN SAVORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Surving the Worst Drought in 1000 Years— Creative Carbon Cockys LOUISA KIELY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Grazing the Grasslands Could Help The Environment & Economy PETER HOLTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Holistic Management as Service Learning
continued on page 2
R. H. RICHARDSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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LAND & LIVESTOCK Prospecting for Green—The Importance of a Resource Base Reality Check JIM HOWELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Testing the Social Weak Link— Paul and Cheri Little
During a two-day period, the goat herd was placed in an area heavy with star thistle. As you can see from the photos, the goats decimated the star thistle allowing opportunity for the perennial grasses to return.
TONY MALMBERG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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