BACKGROUND
An amazing man, Allan Savory, spent the better part of 50 years developing a decision-making framework that is called Holistic management. It is a sure-fire way of making decisions that best suit your Holistic Framework without meeting unintended consequences down the line. One of the tools that he developed under that framework is called ‘Holistic land and Livestock management’.
The world's terrestrial biotic systems can be viewed on a so-called ´Brittleness scale´', that describes the distribution of humidity across the year. The brittle areas of the world have high humidity for a short period of the year followed by very dry spells. Those areas are where desertification is happening. These areas are also usually grasslands and all the world’s major grasslands within these brittle areas evolved with large herds of herbivores oved by pursuing pack-hunting predators. Be it lions and buffalo in Africa or wolves and bison on the Great Plains...grasslands need the action of these two groups. Therefore, in Africa where people are living hand-to-mouth on these savannah grasslands that are desertifying, they are also sharing the space with predators like lions. With severely depleted wild prey, lions target livestock. Moreover, these landscapes are also not functioning as they have evolved to, because one of the vital actions is not occurring: large densely packed herds of prey with hooves breaking the soils and mulching the ground and mouths eating the grass and returning nutrients to the soil. Holistic land and Livestock management is a way that we can manage the livestock in such a way as to mimic the actions of the long-lost herds of wild ungulates tearing up the ground, fertilising the lands and grazing the grasses. Using cattle herders as a proxy for lions, where lions kept herbivores like buffalo and wildebeest moving constantly, now the herder does the same with cattle. Regenerating land leads to abundant landscapes with reduced conflict because there is more to share now, the less conflict.
DESCRIPTION
From my lion work in the past, 90% of cattle killed by lions are killed when grazing without a herder. When I was a child in Zimbabwe, I never saw a herd of cattle alone without a herder. Therefore, something has changed.
When we ask what has changed, the answer is that the herders, traditionally young men, do not want to herd cattle today. They prefer Facebook and fancy shoes and different jobs. Yet, herding is vital for the survival of the cattle in the face of predators and the regeneration of grasslands. We have taken on the challenge to make herding an opportunity for a Facebook page and a job and fancy shoes and thereby keep the young men here but give them the future they want using herding as that tool. We employ a carpenter to teach them carpentry, we have trained them to use an industrial sewing machine and they now sew the mobile bomas that they use to keep cattle safe and fertilise their fields. They put their individual herds of cattle together into bigger collective herds and that means they do turns so each get time away from herding to learn in the workshop (improve their skills and get the certificate?) (.. Skills, income, fertilizing fields, safe cattle, regenerating grasslands, and stop the killing of lions.
PRINCIPLE
Mimicking natural processes to regenerate lands, making landscapes abundant and reducing conflict. This using appropriate traditional herding knowledge and not expensive technologies. Regenerating cultures and strengthening links to the land
CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS
Full community perticipation and motivation
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