Holistic Management Solutions
“My earliest observation was that the healthiest land was where we had the most intact wildlife populations with large herds of buffalo and elephant and many lions and other predators.”
Allan Savory was born in 1935 in the then Rhodesia. He is an ecologist, environmentalist and global consultant, the pioneer of Holistic Management, a process that helps ranchers and farmers to better manage resources by planning for and integrating all social, economic and environmental factors. He is president and co-founder of The Savory Institute (“SI”), which focuses on holistic management through special projects around the world.
Our executive team posed some questions to Allan about his work and what it means for conservation today.
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert.”
Q Could you give us some background on your first holistic management breakthrough in Zimbabwe?
A Allan Savory: There was no single ‘aha' moment. From my earliest concerns about the environmental degradation in the Northern Rhodesian Game Department in the 1950s until we broke through in 1984 with Holistic Management, it was a struggle until we could ensure consistent results, but I was determined to solve the problem of seemingly inevitable desertification.
My earliest observation was that the healthiest land was where we had the most intact wildlife populations with large herds of buffalo and elephant and many lions and other predators. I learned much from a ‘drought' in the Limpopo basin and Tuli Circle in the early 1960s. As the research officer responsible, I watched some 50 000 head of game die because of ‘drought', but the
