Rangelands

The Dec. 19 article by Margaret Knox that described Allan Savory’s Holistic Resource Management (HRM) program as a panacea for the many environmental impacts created by the livestock industry in the West failed to provide a balanced perspective about both HRM, as well as the real issues surrounding the controversy about livestock production in the West.

Briefly, Savory claims that our rangelands are in a degraded state not because there are too many cattle, but too few. The solution, Savory asserts, is to graze more animals, but move them rapidly from pasture to pasture. Such a process, Savory asserts, mimics past evolutionary influences of bison and other large ungulates which once grazed the western rangelands and as a consequence not only improves the condition of rangelands but allows ranchers to run higher numbers of livestock.

Despite the glowing success stories of HRM ranchers quoted in the article, controlled scientific studies by dozens of range professionals from Canada to Texas have been unable to document any significant superior virtues to HRM when compared to any other well-managed grazing system.

A second problem with Savory’s assertions that rangelands need more cows is that it ignores past evolutionary history of many western ecosystems. Over much of the West no bison ever existed, and even populations of elk, antelope, bighorn sheep and deer were absence, sparse or if abundant, often highly localized.

Even if HRM were proven to be effective in reducing degradation of range plant communities, it does little to address other adverse impacts necessary to sustain livestock production in the arid West such as the de-watering of rivers and streams to irrigate fields (where 90% of the water taken from streams in the West goes), the destruction of native predators from wolves to grizzly bear to make the West safe for cows, the loss of displacement of native herbivores from prairie dogs to bison when cattle usurp space, water and forage, and the conversion of our native public lands range ecosystems into feedlots for privately owned, non-native animals.

To suggest that HRM is a “solution” to the debate is to miss the most essential element of the controversy. It’s not about whether one grazing strategy for cattle is inherently superior to another, but whether we should be grazing cattle at all.

GEORGE WUERTHNER

Livingston, Mont.