February 2004 Vol. 6, No. 3
Grazing in Nature’s Image by Jim Howell My family ranches in the high altitude grasslands, shrublands, and forests of southwestern Colorado, near the tiny town of Cimarron. We also operate an outfitting business during the fall hunting seasons, and we occasionally fire up the chain saw to generate income through the sustainable harvest of our forest resource. We “custom” graze cattle—both yearlings and cow/calf pairs— through the spring, summer, and early fall growing season. When the snow starts to fly, we load everything up and send them on to their winter homes. My family has owned this land since 1937, but I personally only had the chance to spend my summers in Colorado while growing up. My dream all through childhood was to return to this land and figure out how to derive my living from it. In 1997, my wife, Daniela, and I had the chance to take over management of the ranch, and so began our current journey of land stewardship in the high altitude Rockies. Prior to moving back to
Colorado, we had been working for Allan Savory and the Center for Holistic Management, managing a ranch they had been contracted to operate in the Chihuahuan Desert of south-
Editor’s Note
In this, the third in our series on “Nature’s Model,” we explore the issue of grazing and how, by following the lessons nature teaches us, grazing can be done in such a way as to protect and sustain the resource and in such a way as to restore it.
western New Mexico. Prior to that, I managed a pasture-based dairy in east Texas, modeled after New Zealand style forage-based dairy production. I spent my senior year of college as an exchange student in New Zealand, where I learned the ins-and-outs of making milk on grass. During college, I was also introduced to the management of cool season annual grasslands in California, where I worked as the assistant manager of my university’s beef cattle unit. During the winter months, Daniela, our daughter Savanna, and I lead small groups on educational agricultural tours to ranches in the southern hemisphere. The ranches we visit cover a broad range of habitats, from the very productive high rainfall savannas of tropical Zimbabwe, to the humid, productive, temperate Pampas of Argentina, to the flat western grasslands of New South Wales, Australia. We have spent time in the rugged and remote Kimberly Region of
(con’t on page 18)