FROM: Robert M. Dixon, Ph.D

The Imprinting Foundation

re: Holistic Resource Management (HRM)

This is to clarify my comments regarding Alan Savory's HRM. Intense grazing management is justified only where there are vegetative resources to manage. This statement seems obvious enough but it seems to escape Savory, at least when he applies HRM to southwestern rangeland where perennial grasses were grazed into extinction a century ago. Thus the first step in improving these rangelands for cattle is to restore the perennial grasses with such seeding methods as land imprinting. Then one has a vegetative resource to manage. Management should be directed to sustaining the resource indefinitely into the future. The low hot desert regions of the Southwest cannot tolerate any grazing at all by livestock as this is not a sustainable practice no matter how good the grazing management-exotic cows are simply an ecological misfit. The objective of imprinter seeding of these regions should be ecological restoration for wildlife and recreation. Thus HRM applies only to the wetter and cooler regions (higher elevations) of the Southwest and only after perennial grasses have been restored. In the latter regions imprinting and HRM are complementary not competitive practices. Imprinter seeding is the precursor of HRM or other types of grazing management, many of which are far superior to HRM.

In the Southwest the overgrazing of perennial grass by cattle has allowed unpalatable shrubs to colonize the rangelands from Texas to California; whereas Great Basin overgrazing of perennial grasses by sheep has allowed cheatgrass (and other annuals) to colonize the rangelands. This is because of the different grazing/browsing habits of cattle and sheep. Cattle are about 75% grass grazers and 25% shrub browsers, while sheep and goats are just the reverse. I think that the annual grasses can be displaced by perennials with the aid of land imprinter using strategies that work in the Southwest.

Best Regards,

Bob Dixon

The Imprinting Foundation

1616 E. Lind Road

Tucson, Arizona 85719

info@imprinting.org