This is one of the most important posts ever on WUWT, it will be a top “sticky” post for a few days, and new posts will appear below this one during that time.
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Imagine, shooting 40,000 elephants to prevent the land in Africa from going to desert because scientists thought the land couldn’t sustain them, only to find the effort was for naught and the idea as to why was totally wrong. That alone was a real eye opener.
Every once in awhile, an idea comes along that makes you ask, “gee why hasn’t anybody seen this before?”. This one of those times. This video below is something I almost didn’t watch, because my concerns were triggered by a few key words in the beginning. But, recommended by a Facebook friend, I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did, because I want every one of you, no matter what side of the climate debate you live in, to watch this and experience that light bulb moment as I did. The key here is to understand that desertification is one of the real climate changes we are witnessing as opposed to some the predicted ones we often fight over.
It is one of those seminal moments where I think a bridge has been created in the climate debate, and I hope you’ll seize the moment and embrace it. This video comes with my strongest possible recommendation, because it speaks to a real problem, with real solutions in plain language, while at the same time offering true hope.
This is a TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory in Los Angeles this past week, attended by our friend Dr. Matt Ridley, whose presentation we’ll look at another time. Sometimes, TED talks are little more that pie in the sky; this one is not. And, it not only offers a solution, it shows the solution in action and presents proof that it works. It makes more sense than anything I’ve seen in a long, long, time. Our friend Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., champion of studying land use change as it affects local and regional climate will understand this, so will our cowboy poet Willis Eschenbach, who grew up on a cattle ranch. I daresay some of our staunchest critics will get it too.
To encapsulate the idea presented, I’ll borrow from a widely used TV commercial and say:
Beef, it’s what’s for climate
You can call me crazy for saying that after you watch this presentation. A BIG hattip to Mark Steward Young for bringing this to my attention.
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.
Published on Mar 4, 2013
There’s a longer version with more detail below, about an hour long. Also worth watching if you want to understand the process in more detail:
Feasta Lecture 2009
Extracts available at vimeo.com/8291896
Allan Savory argued that while livestock may be part of the problem, they can also be an important part of the solution. He has demonstrated time and again in Africa, Australia and North and South America that, properly managed, they are essential to land restoration. With the right techniques, plant growth is lusher, the water table is higher, wildlife thrives, soil carbon increases and, surprisingly, perhaps four times as many cattle can be kept.
feasta.org/events/general/2009_lecture.htm
Recorded 7 November 2009, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
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http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/14860
Absolutely wonderful.
That’s great, but I see a flaw… How can you graze thousands of cattle in an area with no grass or other such vegetation?
Thanks a lot Anthony. I intend to call attention to this on my blog.
I mentioned Mr. Savorys work here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/13/to-sahel-and-back/#comment-828805 and here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/16/water-evaporated-from-trees-cools-global-climate/#comment-744521 in a wider context.
Regenerative Agriculture (RegenAg) takes the principles even further, RegenAg uses Savorys Holistic Management techniques alongside keyline ploughing (developed by P.A. Yeoman) and the integrated design principles of Permaculture (developed by Bill Mollison) to provide a proven system to regenerate soils and landscapes in a productive, profitable, manor.
I attended the UK RegenAg design course run by Darren Doherty in 2011, highly recommended for farmers, landscape designers, and environmentalists, this is the future of farming IMO. see links for further details.
http://regenag.com/web/
http://www.regenerativeagriculture.co.uk/
Thank you Anthony, this is a very important message to all people concerned about climate.
It may be a bit bold to assume that rising CO2 is caused by desertification rather than by fossil fuels, but that would explain why it didn’t stop even though temperatures aren’t rising for quite a few years already.
A scientist willing to admit a mistake, and Savory’s mistake was enormous, is a real scientist. I’ll bet you don’t see him too often behind a desk or tied to a GIGO computer program. I am a little amazed that this is the first time I’m learning of his work, but in the little shown, it sure makes sense and sure gives one a sense of hope for all the species on earth. With the constant din of gloom and doom from our politicians, media and nay-sayers, this is a breath of fresh air.
I am sharing this with as many as I can. Here in HK they seem to be doing their best to eliminate water buffaloes but they are an essential part of the ecology.
Government officials and a protection group have in recent years moved four buffaloes, from Lantau and elsewhere to the WWF-run Mai Po nature reserve in northwest Hong Kong. Such moves are usually prompted by complaints from the public.
The latest addition, Mai Bo, arrived in September. The WWF says the animals are proving a great help at the 380-hectare (940-acre) reserve where they graze wetlands, which in turn helps to attract rare birds.
“We found that buffalo are actually very good at managing the habitats, at keeping short vegetation… which provides very good habitat for the birds that we get here,” said John Allcock, WWF-Hong Kong’s head of habitat management and monitoring at Mai Po.
He hopes to take in more buffaloes but distances the WWF from the debate that moving the animals has sparked in a city where many are concerned with the loss of heritage that has come as a consequence of its development.
“I think of them as something that adds character to Lantau,” said David Blecken, a 32-year-old British journalist who lives on Hong Kong’s main island.
“I think Hong Kong sometimes lacks a connection with nature, so it’s quite nice to see animals of any kind in Hong Kong.”
LINK
Now that I think about it most ruminates (cows, buffaloes, etc) have developed a symbiotic relationship with grasses. Many species of grasses have seed coats that survive going through a cow’s stomachs and are deposited with a capsule of highly nutritious plant food.Then they are tilled into the ground by the hooves of the cows. Cows are natures little farm combines running around tilling the soil and planting seeds for next years crops.
Ask any farmer what happens if you use raw manure on farmland. Your fields get full of whatever plants the cows had been eating, so they compose or heat the manure first to kill the seeds in it.
Basically? Blah blah blah. Each day you, Tony Watts, you further PULL otherwise rational souls into some odd combination of “nice old men” propaganda, minus any edge, or minus anything but your stealing of cool from simple libertarian citizens of the United States of America.
Every day you bury you best clothes in piles of dirty and maybe dirty underwear.
Republicans, anti-science Republicans, are already on the side of reason.
Now what?
I don’t know.
“2 Ancient African Civilisation in the Sahara”
“Historian Basil Davidson looks at ancient rock paintings in Zimbabwe of civilised black-skinned African peoples. “The evidence of these paintings suggests a continuous community of peoples, lving right across the Saharah from the Atlantic to the valley of the Nile.”
As the Sahara was overtaken by desert around 2000 BCE, these peoples moved southwards and eastwards”.
1 – There are political problems. Dr Allan Savory is not an American. So anything he says is most likely to be ignored until it is ‘invented in America’. Even worse, he is a white man who worked for the British Colonial Service in Rhodesia (as was). In current politics, that makes him a racist imperialist.
2 – Won’t somebody think of the poor Sand Lizards which will have their habitat ruined if the desert is removed?
The ideas are very good, but I reckon the above is what they’ll fail on…
@ur momisugly tommoriarty
I wholeheartedly agree with your biofuel sentiments. However I would suggest being circumspect with regards to Jared Diamond. He is a bit of a Malthusian in my opinion and his work made him the darling of the “chicken-little, let’s see who we can scare into giving us money” crowd. I find his theories interesting, but not exactly hopeful as you see in Savory’s work.
FANTASTIC! Bravo! Wow!
I learned something today and am well impressed. Thanks. From cheap simple solutions we had increased vegetation, water retention, more food, carbon sequestration. I am impressed. That light bulb moment went on when he pointed out that the current year’s grassland must be removed for the following years grass to grow with the key being moving livestock.
When I read
I thought it was just a hypothetical example, but it happened and for nought.
On a sad and cynical note, and I do hope I’m wrong here, but it seems this lesson will not be of much interest to those seeking funds to ‘tackle’ climate change as there ain’t money to be made. Please feel free to snip this last paragraph, it’s just the way I feel.
Wonderful talk and I can ignore his comments about carbon as he says himself, “I’m no expert on carbon”. It’s not his discipline so has simply accepted the ‘consensus’.
I doubt it will get the backing it needs, as it goes totally against the thinking behind Agenda 21 which is to return as much land back to ‘Nature’ as possible and move the people into confined urban areas.You won’t get the environmentalists on board, either, as other commenters have said, as their focus is on forcing vegetarianism on us all. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a foreign land to them.
I liked the part where he learned the “consensus” about cows in college and later found out that the “consensus” was completely wrong… But there won’t be a single professor anywhere teaching about ecology or ecosystems who won’t constantly be demonizing cows – it’s just a reflex action by now…
Hi Anthony,
sorry but I do not see the light here, on the contrary. Having worked as a scientist, development aid administrator and consultant to major international developing agencies on land and water management for about 30 years in Africa and Asia, I am sad to see the lack of skepticism – especially on this site – when people promote ideas like this without proper documentation.
Several statements may be challenged i the presentation, but let’s just recall what a team of scientists have concluded on the subject in a Synthesis Paper on the issue (Briske et al., 2008, Rangeland Ecol Manage 61: 3-17) with reference also to Savory: “Continued advocacy for rotational grazing as a superior strategy of grazing on rangelands is founded on perception and anecdotal interpretations, rather than an objective assessment of the vast experimental evidence.”
Further:
“The rangeland profession has become mired in confusion,
misinterpretation, and uncertainty with respect to the evaluation
of grazing systems and the development of grazing
recommendations and policy decisions. We contend that this
has occurred because recommendations have traditionally been
based on perception, personal experience, and anecdotal
interpretations of management practices, rather than evidence-
based assessments of ecosystem responses, which is
a common phenomenon in ecosystem management (Pullin et
al. 2003; Sutherland et al. 2004). This has seriously impeded
the development of more robust, consistent, and unified grazing
management recommendations and policy decisions to govern
this predominant land use on rangelands.”
Finally, recall that the socalled Sahel crisis of the 1970-80 with widespread “desertification” has later been found to be driven by decadal changes in rainfall pattern. The vegetation has largely recovered in recent years with more “normal” rainfall.
regards .. jens
Anthony,
Does anyone here know how he is funded or how to make donations?
Seth
The following paragraph is very important as it should alert people to the ‘solutions’ being proposed to ‘tackle’
global warmingclimate change. It may all be for nothing.Something similar was carried out in Africa earlier called the Cattle Killing Movement of the Xhosa.
Absolutely, brilliantly simple, give him the warmist funding.
Send it to the BBC.
I dislike immensely the continuous use of carbon as opposed to CO² (a minor thing but annoying) and the absolute assumption that CO² of itself fuels (climate change) global warming. He like many other environmentalists has adopted the “climate change” description of global warming to avoid conflict with reality.
However, one cannot fault his work and his passion and his drive and he should receive all the money currently being wasted by Hansen et al so it can be put to real environmental restoration instead of the destruction of human civilization. We are all environmentalists. None of us wants to destroy the planet on which we live. Give him all the backing he needs to get on with his work as fast as nature will allow.
Thanks to Anthony and to Mark Steward Young
NikFromNYC says:
March 9, 2013 at 1:49 am
You need to lay off the maruyana, son. You are in danger of losing it altogether.
Australia shows a high % of desertification on the maps. The Savory approach has been tried in parts, without, I suspect, the scientists knowing that there needed to be a more coordinated plan. Some plus and minus policies compared to the Savory plan.
e.g. 1960s, CSIRO Division of Tropical pastures introduced legumes and grasses to assist beef cattle area. This is the good part. I helped in a very small way and time in my early graduate years.
e.g. 1979, start of eradication of 20,000 water buffalo from Kakadu national park because they were not native. Some were machine gunned from helicopters. Current National Park thinking is here, including fire management. http://www.environment.gov.au/parks/kakadu/management/conservation.html
e.g. recent decades, culling of brumby horses and camels from the arid interior
e.g. spreading the misconception that agriculture is self-conserving and does not need inputs like animals
e.g demonising cloven hoofed animals for the reason that they break up dry soil and make it more dust bowl.
If it is shown that the Savory plan is sound, it will take quite some time to provide at least minimal pasture for carrying capacity to be increased. That is not insurmountable, it’s just slow.
There is a strong push here, with the national broadcaster the ABC strongly involved, for a silly idea called ‘organic farming’. I’ve formally complained about objectivity in this pseudo-science by the ABC and been treated badly.
There are variants, but I can’t close without quoting “Biodynamic agriculture uses various herbal and mineral additives for compost additives and field sprays; these are sometimes prepared by mystical (and controversial) methods, such as burying ground quartz stuffed into the horn of a cow, which are said to harvest “cosmic forces in the soil”, See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture and more.
Alan Savory has had a strong following among sustainable farmers in Australia for many years. I use the word sustainable as it meant before the Greenies thought it meant stopping everything and in particular the use of and consumption of animals. As a now retired farmer I was always amazed at how nature did what I was trying to do. I guess it is best summed up as working with the environment to achieve a mutual benefit rather than working against it to achieve a good outcome for me alone. It lead me to abandon insecticides and most herbicides and take a smaller return albeit with a smaller outlay. As a lucerne (alfalfa for you yanks) grower we often had leaf roller (heliothis) attacks and some neighbours sprayed to control them. I put up with them and chaffed my hay so slight imperfections went un-noticed. What I found was that I had many more insectivorous birds visiting every time I mowed and many just lived on the farm for the duration. I also had many good insects like ladybugs that ate aphids. No real science I agree but observations and outcomes should count for something. Unfortunately our agricultural scientists by and large concentrate their advice about the bottom line and higher outputs rather than a holistic approach that allowed me to avoid using large quantities of artificial fertilizers but still maintain healthy soils and a reasonable return. The Greens here, and most politicians who are not game to buck the trend, continue to lock up our National Parks just to see them burn every few years when the re-introduction of grazing animals would reduce the fuel load and flame height as they once did before the parks were created from crown land grazing leases. I don’t say farmers know everything but they certainly know more than city bred land managers. Alan is a respected observer of nature who has articulated what he sees.
This sounds a lot like the work of Joel Salatin in Virginia. He is a farmer that focuses on land restoration. He has written several books that are simple and well written.