Download - #092, In Practice, Nov/Dec 2003
There is an African saying that it takes
a whole village to raise a child. The
message behind this quote is that
children flourish in an environment where
there is healthy community dynamics with
other children, extended family, and friends
participating in the life of each child. From this
diversity of interaction, action, and perception,
the child has the opportunity to experience the
richness of life and reaches adulthood with
greater knowledge of how to contribute back
to that community.
One of the reasons that many families are
attracted to Holistic Management and continue
to manage holistically is because they are able
to improve their family’s quality of life through
better decision-making and planning. In a
best-case scenario, both spouses or head of
household are trained and have an interest in
integrating Holistic Management into family
“procedures” that are already in place like
financial planning, decision-making, and
communication.
However, those who have been introduced
to Holistic Management separately from their
spouses or partners have found it challenging to
bring these new ideas forward without feeling
they are perceived as “preaching” a new path or
knowing more than the other family members.
Such a scenario can become fertile breeding
grounds for conflict if care isn’t taken to respect
differences while looking for common ground.
Every Head is a World
A key to successfully creating the latter
outcome rather than the former, is the
willingness to explore life rather than assume
that how we were raised is the only way to live
life. In doing so, we encourage creativity and
exploration, helping family members move
beyond those assumptions. We create our new
families believing we know what is “right” from
our experiences with our biological family, but
we have the opportunity of discovering what
best serves our family of choice through our
willingness to explore life together.
This is not to say that the families we grew
up in did things wrong; rather, we must
recognize life is dynamic and full of change.
We meet people who were possibly raised in
different ways or with different cultures. In
creating new protocol, standards, or ground
rules with our family of choice, it helps to have
a way to explore the values that are important
to them and create an environment where we
can nurture those values for everyone in the
family. Families practicing Holistic Management
have consistently found the holistic goal setting
to be immensely helpful in communicating
those values and helping families make
decisions toward the life they want.
The articles in this issue demonstrate that
heightened level of creativity, exploration,
communication and respect. In managing
holistically, these people have a greater
understanding and appreciation for their families
and what they have to offer to their families.
In “Building A Tribal Legacy,” the story of
the Colville tribe’s effort to better serve their
children, we learn that we need to move
beyond our own self-interest and comfort to
look at how we can best serve the needs of
children by more deeply integrating the
traditions that have served us and examining
the ones that haven’t.
If we truly want to make decisions that are
sustainable, then by definition we must consider
and include children in those decisions. To do
this effectively, we need to remember the
dynamic nature of children and of life, adapt
to the evolution of our families, question our
own assumptions, and make decisions in which
our children’s future is the top priority. And, if
we develop such a policy based not on sacrifice,
but on the philosophy or principle of
abundance and regeneration, we will have
moved a great deal closer to the future
resource base that we desire.
We’re Doing It for the ChildrenSteven Dahlberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Holistic Management and the Whole
FamilyMark Gardner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Building a Tribal LegacyAnn Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Okay Dad, I Get It—Introducing Holistic
Management to My FamilyPhil Metzger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
LAND & LIVESTOCK—A specialsection of IN PRACTICE
Into the Woods—Holistic Decisions in theForest
Jim Howell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9On the Circle Ranch—NourishingWilderness
Jim Howell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Savory Center Bulletin Board . . . . . . .15
Savory Center Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Certified Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Exploring Familiesby Ann Adams
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 NUMBER 92
HOLISTICMANAGEMENT IN PRACTICEProviding the link between a healthy environment and a sound economy
in this Issue
As we create families of choice, we oftenmust learn to integrate different culturesand traditions. Holistic Management canhelp us address that challenge withimproved communication and creativityby providing us with an avenue formeaningful dialogue with our childrenand spouses.
The Savory Center
2 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE #92
In many ways we are the standard
American family of today with a house,
kids (daughters, 12- and 14-years old, and
5-year old triplet boys), 2 cars, 2.5 jobs, and
debt. We are always way too busy (my wife’s
students call her Superwoman) and have no
time for many of the things we claim are
important.
Two years ago we decided something had
to give. My wife and I were investing a lot of
energy working for other peoples’ educational
success and our own daughters were falling
through the cracks. Even before learning about
Holistic Management, we chose to make the
financial sacrifices
necessary for Terrijann,
my wife, to home-school
our children. She did
double duty by also
teaching college courses
half-time, but still it
was a tremendous
improvement in our lives.
Without knowing it yet,
we were attempting to
live more in line with our holistic goal.
During that year we also decided that
our sons would not have the same
counterproductive school experiences that their
older sisters did. With that as partial motivation,
we made plans to start a school rooted in our
rather unconventional educational philosophy.
Last year we opened The Red River Valley
Academy, a for-profit toddler, preschool, and
elementary school built on our integrated,
thematic, story and discovery-based curriculum.
The school motto is, “The whole child is thewhole idea!” My wife is the director, and I am
the CHDO (Chief Honey Do Officer). We have
seven full-time employees, several part-timers,
and about 60 children enrolled.
This year has been a real mixed blessing
of successes, tribulations, and very long hours
as we walk a financial razor’s edge. Terrijann
continues to teach half-time (hence the
Superwoman moniker). Within two months
of starting the school, I also had a new job rich
in opportunity, but equally rich in commuting
and new responsibilities.
It was during this year of massive change
THE SAVORY CENTER is a 501(c) (3) non-profitorganization. The Savory Center works torestore the vitality of communities and thenatural resources on which they depend byadvancing the practice of Holistic Managementand coordinating its development worldwide.
BOARD OF DIRECTORSRio de la Vista, Chair
Allan Savory, Vice-ChairLeslie Christian, SecretaryRichard Smith, Treasurer
Manuel CasasJudy Richardson
Bruce WardTerry Word
ADVISORY COUNCILJim Shelton, Chair, Vinita, OK
Robert Anderson, Corrales, NMMichael Bowman,Wray, CO
Sam Brown, Austin, TXLeslie Christian, Portland, ORGretel Ehrlich, Gaviota, CA
Jeff Fadiman, Half Moon Bay, CACynthia & Leo Harris, Albuquerque, NM
Trudy Healy, Taos, NMClint Josey, Dallas, TX
Krystyna Jurzykowski, Glen Rose, TXDianne Law, Laveta, CO
Doug McDaniel, Lostine, ORGuillermo Osuna, Coahuila, Mexico
Jim Parker, Montrose, CODean William Rudoy, Cedar Crest, NM
York Schueller, El Segundo, CARichard Smith, Houston, TX
FOUNDERSAllan Savory
Jody Butterfield
STAFFTim LaSalle, Executive Director; ShannonHorst, Senior Director, Strategic Projects; Kate Bradshaw, Director of Finance andAdministration; Kelly Pasztor, Director of Educational Services; Constance Neely,International Training Programs Director; Lee Dueringer, Director of Development;Ann Adams, Managing Editor, IN PRACTICEand Director of Publications and Outreach;Jessica Stolz, Finance Coordinator; LeeJohnson, Project Assistant.
Africa Centre for Holistic ManagementPrivate Bag 5950, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe tel: (263) (11) 213529; email:[email protected] Matanga, Director; Roger Parry,Manager, Regional Training Centre; Elias Ncube,Hwange Project Manager/Training Coordinator
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE (ISSN:1098-8157) is published six times a year by TheSavory Center, 1010 Tijeras NW, Albuquerque, NM87102, 505/842-5252, fax: 505/843-7900; email:[email protected].; website: www.holisticmanagement.org Copyright © 2003.
Ad definitum finem
that I began the Holistic Management® Certified
Educator Training Program, and we took our
first tentative steps towards practicing what I
was learning. We have repeatedly seen the
value of the decision-making framework for
improving our life, particularly as we find
ourselves crashing into the apparent conflict
between key parts of our holistic goal
symbolized by time and money.
Time & Money Conflicts
I have been dealing rather uncreatively
with this paradox all my adult life, and I’m
quite certain that I’m not unique in this regard.
The question is how do
we creatively balance
the income necessary
for the financial portions
of our goal with the
time we need for
our children, our
relationships, and
ourselves? I have to tell
you now before you get
too excited that I do nothave the answer to this question, but I think
we have made some progress.
Obviously the first step was to create a
holistic goal. With that we could begin to weed
the tangled jungle of our life. The first things
to go were a variety of professional and social
obligations that were clearly non-productive
in terms of our holistic goal. For example, I
have spent four years on the Environmental
Education Advisory Board for the state of
Minnesota. Environmental education is a topic
of supreme interest to me and there was some
prestige in the position, but I’ve been frustrated
with the lack of tangible outcomes from our
efforts as a board. When I compared the
benefits of another term on the board with the
cost in time lost for my other responsibilities,
both marginal reaction and my “gut check”
said there was too little value to continue.
Terrijann and I have both been asked to
publish or present the results of our
pedagogical work. We rarely accept these
requests because they could only be
accomplished by sleeping less and/or spending
less time with our children. These latter
We’re Doing it for the Childrenby Steven Dahlberg
Holistic Management has given us thetools to simplify
our lives.
activities are critical to our quality of life and
are extremely compromised already. The
benefits of being more professionally active
have little value for us and are not part of our
holistic goal. Therefore, the marginal reaction,
and society and culture questions show the
benefits of sleep and family usually outweigh
those of greater professional recognition.
Socially, we have eliminated every
structured activity including those at church
and attending theater productions. These
decisions were much harder because they
involve things that are important
parts of our holistic goal. Our current
situation is so stressful that any
additional demands on our time and
resources produce more stress than
enjoyment no matter how
pleasurable the activity.
We have so may have-to-do’s that
we must limit ourselves to a very
few want-to-do’s that are the most
crucial to our holistic goal. For both
of us these priority activities are our
children and occasional exercise. I
have to confess that I went straight
to the gut for this one. My dirty little
secret as a Holistic Management
practitioner is that I generally go first
to society and culture, and only
resort to the other questions if I don’t
get a clear answer there.
The second big change was a
reprioritization of some of our have-to-do’s.
To illustrate, in the past I would go to great
lengths to find a way to teach my classes even
if we had sick children or other home issues.
While creating our holistic goal, it became
clear to me that my obsession with work
duties was driven more by external
expectations than by my quality of life
aspirations. I’m a work-to-live guy, not visa
versa. Clear articulation of our holistic goal
demonstrated that the sacrifices I was making
for my job were not proportional to the role
of work in that goal, and I needed to put
family first in more situations.
Testing Priorities
Neither of these sets of changes amounted
to that much time, but the reduction in stress
was amazing. We had more flexibility in
scheduling. We (OK, mostly I) had fewer
things to feel guilty about not devoting
enough time to them, and I didn’t feel so
much like I was letting my students down by
missing class occasionally. As I described, both
the marginal reaction test and our feelings
want our boys in the structure of day care
(even at our school) all summer. Once again,
the testing questions helped me decide on
only two projects (well, it was four, but two
of them I could do at home) that would allow
me to be with the kids most of the summer.
Both “official” projects gave me the
opportunity to learn things that were vital
parts of my personal holistic goal in addition
to earning money. Because of this, they
clearly passed several of the tests (marginal
reaction, energy/money, sustainability, and
society and culture). We determined
that the “opportunity costs” of all the
others were more than the benefits
they might generate (they weren’t
that interesting, involved major time
commitments, and/or didn’t
pay that well).
In the past, I would have tried
to do all of them and justify it by
financial need, but our holistic goal
clearly shows money is just one of
many priorities in our life and cannot
be the sole basis for a decision. I
think we made a better choice by
attempting to optimize the conflicting
needs of income and time instead of
maximizing one or the other. That
decision passed the sustainability
test because there was at least some
progress towards both the financial and
familial parts of our holistic goal, and it
felt right.
As I said at the beginning of this article,
we have not found a way to simultaneously
create time and money. I doubt we have
reached an optimal balance of familial, civic,
personal, and financial responsibilities. We will
continue to work on those fronts, but in the
meantime the Holistic Management® decision-
making framework has given us the tools to
simplify our lives while still performing the
most vital tasks for moving us toward our
holistic goal. It has helped us balance, to some
degree, the need for time and money. Most
importantly, it reinforced for me what my
wife has always known, that time with one’s
children should always come first. Of course,
making that work is still the $39 question.
Hence the need for my favorite part of
Holistic Management—MonitorControlReplan,
but that’s a whole other story.
If you are interested in learning moreabout our school or any of the othercraziness described in this article, contact me at [email protected].
indicated that the jettisoned (or demoted)
activities were less valuable than other uses of
our time. Perhaps, more importantly, practicing
Holistic Management helped clarify that such
decisions needed to be made in the first place.
For me personally another big stress
producer is my rather excessive suite of
hobbies that were making substantial
demands on my time, money, and quality of
life. Here I used a modified form of the
logjam. The logjam in “producing” our quality
of life are too many commitments and too
much debt. The logjam test says that is where
to invest our resources in order to improve
“production.” Hobbies are discretionary by
definition and were an ideal place to address
these weak links. Giving up all of them would
adversely affect my quality of life though, so I
needed to prioritize.
Once again, I used a combination of
intuition and marginal reaction to help decide
which hobbies would go and which would
stay. It was actually pretty easy. I just ditched
the ones I was feeling guilty about while
being engaged in obviously higher priority
activities. For example, I often found myself
thinking I should work on my truck as I
grabbed my bike to go exercise. For that
reason, exercising stays and working on
the truck goes.
Free Time Dilemma
We had done our best to free up as much
time as possible, but we were still left with
the question of how to use that time most
effectively. Time and money came into conflict
in the process of determining how I would
spend my summer “vacation.” I had many
options for summer work, but we also didn’t
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 3
Giovanni, Natalija (14), Alejandro, Steve, Tatijana (12),Terrijann, Fabian.
4 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE #92
Broadly speaking our “whole” family
consists of myself, Cassie (my wife),
Emily (10), Caitlin (8) and William (5),
Mr. Vincent (the cat), and Daisy (the dog). We
live in Dubbo, which is the “Hub of the West”
in Central West New South Wales, Australia,
and operate our own Agricultural and
Management Consulting Business from home
(of which Holistic Management is the soul).
Like most families working with Holistic
Management, we have gone though
some ups and downs as we have
sought to manage ourselves and our
resources. It hasn’t always been a
smooth progression. There are some
aspects, which we are proud of (such
as our holistic goal), and there are
areas in which we continue to work
on, particularly as we strive to adapt
the process to our circumstances (a
non-rural resource base and business).
We see ourselves very much as
learners of the process (but with a bit
of experience!) rather than experts.
In this article we would like to
talk about the important part of
Holistic Management to us—the
holistic goal, and how we are trying
to bring our young children into the
process of Holistic Management.
Creating Time
One of the biggest challenges we have
faced over the last six years is getting the
holistic goal settled and meaningful to Cassie
and me, and then our children. We are a young
active family, and we are busy running our
own business, so creating time to be able to
think through our holistic goal (individually
and then together) has often been hard. On a
number of occasions, Cassie and I have hired a
meeting room close by, and planned for the
children to be “agisted” (farmed out) in order
to get some thinking time and space. We have
found that getting our combined thinking
organized has been necessary before we could
start to make good decisions about the future
or to start to involve the children at a
significant level. This has taken time, and
was not always easy!
The importance of “being heard” has
allowed us to communicate openly and
honestly. We have found when we have
focused on developing these conditions, we
have made some great gains in our holistic
goal formation and decision-making. We have
found it important not to react to what each
other is saying, but to listen, understand,
respect and then inquire about what (if any)
actions may be required. When we have
practiced this, we found great gains in
understanding each other’s values, fears and
aspirations, all of which have found their
way into the holistic goal. Without creating
good conditions to communicate, we may
not have been able to get to some very core
understandings of the things important to
us. Worse still, we may have made some
incorrect assumptions.
Involving The Children
Even though our children are
young, they can often articulate what
is important to them, if we ask them
appropriately and then listen to what
they say. We feel it is important to
create time to do this, however this
is not always easy!
Often their needs appear simple,
but can yield significant insights. For
example, Emily has told us that it is
important to her to spend time with
her friend, Anna (a value), therefore
as a family we try to create
opportunities for this to occur (a
form of production). The underlying
message, which we hope the whole
family hears, is that Emily’s views are
important and that our family will do its best
to allow the important things to her to occur.
The same is true for the other children. This
may sound very simple, but we feel we are
sending a very powerful message. Over time,
the children have started to understand that
our family values their opinions, and that they
are important people within our “whole.” At
times, our values don’t allow them to achieve
their expectations (such as a Nintendo and TV
in the bedroom), but we hope that the way in
which we have communicated this to the
children has also helped them understand why.
The children have also become very open
in talking about things of importance to them
and are respectful to each other. Recently we
have gently started to ask them about the way
in which they might like to see their futures—
starting the next phase of the process.
Holistic Management and the Whole Familyby Mark Gardner
plenty of thinking and a commitment to
want to do it, but it has been worth it.
A United Front
Having created the time, we found the
holistic goal development process enabled
Cassie and I to frame our thinking in a similar
style (culminating in our written holistic goal).
This helps us talk with the children from a
position of unity.
Developing the holistic goal has also
helped us to think and to grow into an
awareness of the things that are important to
us, to each other (our values), and the way in
which we want our future to be. Being able
to work through the steps of holistic goal
formation allowed us to form joint ideas and
hence making decisions together became a lot
easier over time (less emphasis on formalized
testing with more emphasis on the holistic
goal). Creating a non-threatening environment
to communicate openly has been essential.
For us, this took some time, as I suppose my
inclination was to race on quickly, talking
“Holistic Management speak” without making
sure that Cassie understood what we were
doing and why. So, I had to learn to slow
down, think of how Cassie might best receive
information, speak less, and listen more! This
Mark and Cassie Gardner ave learned how to include theirchildren, William, Caitlin, and Emily, in much of theirplanning.
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 5
the children find a way to work things out
themselves.
Monitoring Progress
Apart from the essential monthly financial
monitoring, we are finding asking simple
questions can be a great way to “early warning”
monitor how we are going as a family. If these
informal questions (“How do you think our
family is doing?”) yield a response which is not
what we anticipate, then action and sometimes
replanning may be required. This is particularly
useful in relation to the amount of time which
Cassie or I are away from the family. If this is
becoming a problem, we can usually find this
out fairly easily from a family member, and
replan accordingly.
Often such replanning will involve Cassie
or myself not taking on an income-producing
opportunity, in order to balance work and
family. Sometimes we’ve made hard decisions
not to travel to attend really important
meetings, as we have felt that our lives are out
of balance (really way out) with our holistic
goal. Sometimes we have made the even
harder decision to take up a work opportunity,
knowing that we are not living in balance with
our holistic goal, but that there is a really
important reason to do so.
When we are making these decisions we
always consult each other. We always try to
communicate the importance of this decision
to the children and each other, and try to be
understanding. In cases like this, we know we
need to bring our lives back into balance with
our holistic goal, and we make every effort to
do so after the decision.
Holistic Management in our family has not
been a steady linear progression. We have at
times had great leaps, both towards and away
from our holistic goal, as life deals its
challenges to us. We continue to learn about
the process and adapt it to our setting. What is
important to us is that our united holistic goal
gives us a “big picture;” it provides us with a
central focus to draw our decision-making
towards, whatever the situation. We find our
family has a growing sense of unity and
purpose, greater opportunities to make good
choices and to monitor and celebrate the
outcomes. For Cassie and me, it has provided
a great framework by which to create a sense
of family.
Mark Gardner is a Certified Educator and can be reached at:[email protected].
ownership in the project.
We have now also started to plan in
advance our major family activities. For
example, one of the best decisions we have
made is to commit to our family holiday
12 months ahead. This has enabled us to plan
backwards so that our business fits in with this
event, and our financial plan allows for enough
income to pay for the holiday and have some
money when we come back. Prior to this
“breakthrough,” we would struggle to get away
for a week or so, always were rushed and
didn’t get a quality break (inevitably lack of
planning also cost us more for the holiday!).
Planning these family activities well ahead
means we are now able to manage three
weeks break, at little additional cost and in a
more relaxed manner. This has also allowed
the children to become involved in the
decision and the planning for the holiday,
and this creates added enjoyment.
Like many great breakthroughs, we realized
that the way in which we were living our life
was not in balance with what we had written
down in our holistic goal. We have found that
anytime we are feeling stressed, it is usually
because one of our values is out of balance.
Understanding this concept gives us good
insight as to changes that may be required.
It’s this form of monitoring that has helped
us address family issues effectively.
Our kitchen table at mealtime has become
a very effective planning tool, as we think
ahead to school holidays and what we all
want to do! Caitlin is now assuming the role
of planning ahead the activities for school
holidays (this plan is stuck on the fridge),
which can also necessitate significant family
decision-making, particularly when there are
potential conflicts, usually around time and
events. When this does occur, we have found
that brainstorming is an important way to
ensure that everyone’s needs are met, followed
by the marginal reaction test. Following a
process such as this means that often as not,
Passing on Values
Our family lives in town, so it is important
to Cassie and I that our children are aware
of the environment around them and their
impact on it. We also feel the need to develop
ecological awareness in our children, and use
our values (contained in our holistic goal) to
help guide our discussions.
One of the important family activities is
our recycling project. Each weekend we take
our glass, plastic and paper to our local
recycling depot. We have had many quality
and enlightening discussions with the children
around this activity such as “Why do we
recycle?” Over the years, they have developed
great pride in this activity, and we have all
learned a lot about the ecosystem while
working together. This increased awareness
can be seen in the choices and decisions we
can now start to make as a family (for
example, how we want our garden to look).
We have been able to use the recent
severe drought to talk about water, soils, and a
whole range of relevant ecological topics. As a
result, we have noted that the children are a
lot more aware of what they see, such as the
amount of water in farm dams, the condition
of plants in the landscape, and the amount of
water that they are using in the house. The
family vegetable garden has also become a
good learning activity, where William’s interest
in bugs and his ability to find and identify
them has developed significantly!
We have found that if we can do things
with the children that are fun, then we can
potentially create a great learning opportunity.
Allowing time (planned and informal) for this
to occur is also essential.
Planning Ahead
Planning has become an important
component in our practice of Holistic
Management. We have used the Holistic
Management® Financial Planning process now
for seven years, and the monthly monitoring
process has been essential to us achieving
many years of planned profits.
We are able to share with the children
our plans for the profit, and to seek their
comments. One example is our recent plans
for a house renovation. The children have
been involved in the planning and design
(including “hands on” measuring up) and in
the discussions on how our “ideal” needs to be
modified by cost constraints. They have been
involved in the decision-making, to their level
of interest, and hence have taken strong
We find our family has a growing sense of
unity and purpose.
6 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE #92
If you’re looking for an early monitoring
indicator of societal health, one canary is
children’s health and well-being. Like the
canary in the mine, children are more sensitive
than adults, to the subtle and not so subtle
nuisances of family and societal paucity or
dysfunction.
In our efforts to improve the overall health
of our society, we have added laws and
agencies to protect, educate, and help our
youth. But, often times the structure
of these systems have actually
hampered our ability to serve this
population and the families and
communities that are part of those
children’s lives.
The Colville Confederated Tribe
in Washington State had become
increasingly sensitive to this
conundrum over the past several
years. However, in the fall of 2001,
with the persistent efforts of several
tribal members, they decided they
needed to do something to address
the situation.
The Scope of the Problem
To give you some perspective of
the need, the Colville Tribe’s legal
office saw 110 children through the
Minor-In-Need-of-Care (MINOC),
which is approximately one third of the 390-
520 children that are the victims of violence on
the Colville Reservation.
Moreover, 27 percent of the Colville Tribe
lives below the federal poverty guideline, a
critical factor for families providing properly
for their children. Add to this dire statistic
the issues of low high school graduation
percentages, increasing delinquency in schools,
and a growing problem of substance abuse,
and the likelihood of a downward spiral in a
family’s ability to provide opportunities for
the next generation increases.
Perhaps the most somber statistic of all
is that national trends for the past 20 years
indicate that the number of suicide attempts
among Indian adolescents has risen by 100
percent. For the past 15 years, suicide has
been the second leading cause of death for
15-24 year-old Indians.
As one tribal member noted, “We may have
become numb to these numbers; they have
Task Force that would work with the involved
agencies to address the needs of tribal youth.
That task force could use the tribe’s holistic
goal (a document that many tribal members
have used since 1995 to make decisions and
create policy) to guide their actions. They
committed money to fund an interagency
workshop and tasked each department to
contribute to a unified solution. This meant
that Children & Family Services, attendance,
schools, Indian Health, and MINOC all had to
work together.
Shifting Perspective
When one agency begins to demand
changes from another and everyone isn’t on
board there can be a lot of territory
protecting. With the Tribal Council’s
mandate for all those agencies involved
with children to develop a system or
program that addressed their needs,
irregardless of current territories or
systems, the focus finally was on the
children and not departmental turf.
One small example of how this type
of change was needed was the way
school attendance and MINOC cases
dealing with abuse and neglect were
handled. In the past, such cases were
addressed solely in court, rather than
in a social service setting that dealt first
with the needs of the child. Such a
system focused more on the legal
concerns for the adults involved, and
the children’s needs were secondary.
With such a system, the children were
getting short-changed.
To maximize creativity, the Juvenile Task
Force began work on the “Then I Came Back:
Juvenile Workshop I” in the spring of 2002. All
departments directly involved with children’s
services were to participate in finding new
ways to help “our children and families who
are at risk; to improve the services we provide
through our programs; to rejuvenate our vision
for our future; and to protect and strengthen
our community and culture.”
Randy Tonasket and Lois Trevino, also
trained in the Savory Center’s Certified
Educator Training Program, were given relief
time from their work in other departments to
help in the facilitation and preparation for the
conference. Using their knowledge of the
Holistic Management® decision-making process
and consensus building, they worked with
agency workers to lay aside differences and
work toward the common focus of providing
excellent support for tribal youth.
Building a Tribal Legacyby Ann Adams
very real meaning for the children, and
particularly the youngest, whose families have
limited resources with which to nurture and
care for them at critical stages in their
development.”
Those working with children daily knew
all these statistics kept pointing to the same
conclusion: The Tribe wasn’t adequately
addressing the needs of the children through
the current system. Agencies had to work
together to make the system more effective.
The Colville Tribe has approximately 2,622 children. The TribalCouncil, and tribal agencies and members, recently madegreat progress toward creating a better life for those children,so they can in turn become respected tribal elders.
A Call to Collaboration
Jolene Marchand, who completed the Savory
Center’s Certified Educator Training Program
and works in the Legal Services Program, was
a key player in getting the Tribal Council
involved in mandating a change in the Colville
Tribe’s children’s advocacy system. She knew
that the Tribe’s holistic goal could help them
forge a new advocacy approach to address the
needs of the Colville children.
At one Tribal Council meeting late in 2001,
Jolene presented the statistics that demonstrated
the need for a better tribal advocacy system
and asked for the Council’s authority to make it
happen. In an emotional meeting, the Council
responded to Jolene’s request by acknowledging
the tribal responsibility to address this issue and
agreeing to support departments in an effort to
combine resources and work together as a
whole to address these issues more efficiently.
The first step was to develop a Juvenile
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 7
ongoing success.
While the Colville Tribe is still in the
process of integrating these changes, they have
a road map for where they want to go with
their Comprehensive Juvenile Services, a road
map that was created by all those involved in
those services. “It was a challenge to take all
this information, simplify and summarize it
quickly, make the connections to other
information and keep things flowing,” says Lois
Trevino. “Having the Tribe’s holistic goal to use
as a common language and focus on, and using
the consensus-building process to really listen,
helped us keep the momentum going in the
planning for the workshop, during the
workshop, and outlining action steps
and those responsible for them after
the workshop.”
This new road toward protecting
the Colville Tribe’s legacy of their youth
and those yet unborn began with one
woman’s courage, passion, and
conviction that the Colville Tribe had
an obligation to better serve their youth
through the services it provided. In
turn, the tribal community rose to the
challenge and found they already had
many of the means and the resources to
accomplish the task, by focusing on the
quality of life described in their holistic
goal. As the Task Force stated in their
proceedings:
“Caring for children is the
responsibility of our community, our extended
families, and not the isolated task of one or two
people, or solely of our institutions. Our culture
provides us with guidance. A newborn brings
new strength to the community and assures
preservation of tribal and community heritage.
Community involvement in pregnancy ensures
that there is, and will be, support for the
pregnant woman regardless of her status, that
the birth is received with joy, and that the
newborn is lovingly nurtured.
Pregnancy in this kind of supportive
environment is a healthy experience and
produces healthy babies. We must work to
ensure that this is our children’s experience and
also that the environment our children find as
they grow continues to provide and care for
them, to protect them, to teach them what they
need to learn, and to love and sustain them.
Each of us can contribute to improving the
lives of our children and theirs to come.”
To learn more about the Colville Tribe’sComprehensive Juvenile Services, contact LoisTrevino at: [email protected].
of core team coordinators with one full-time
clerk/support staff. They would coordinate the
efforts of other social service professionals who
are currently working in other departments to
address these issues. That list would include a
medical provider and a public health nurse at
Indian Health Services, a law enforcement
officer, a legal services representative, a
behavioral health program director/
representative, and a case worker. This core
team would meet with the core team
coordinators twice a month to discuss new and
ongoing cases. Additionally, they would have
supplemental members such as tribal elders,
housing staff, Birth To Three Program staff,
spiritual leaders, and school staff, who would be
asked to contribute to various cases as needed.
Besides providing effective and
comprehensive services for children and their
families by eliminating gaps and redundancies
in existing programs, Comprehensive Juvenile
Services would reinforce culture and
sovereignty (a key component of the Colville
Tribe’s holistic goal). Moreover, with greater
efficiency in handling cases, there will be less
multiple court cases which means less court
and tribal costs for caseworkers, attorney,
experts, and judges.
Likewise, a focus on family conferencing
and the peacemaking circle would be an
integral part of the plan to use a more
traditional approach to conflict and justice by
providing a less adversarial environment for
children’s cases, resulting in fewer court cases.
In increasing family and community
involvement within a structured environment
that nurtures positive communication and
decision-making, the Colville Tribe’s culture and
sovereignty are reinforced and children and
families learn and develop critical skills for
A Tribal Responsibility
The list of objectives developed from that
workshop would have been daunting for any
government body already overwhelmed by
other duties, but the Colville Tribe began
taking action. One step the Juvenile Task Force
took to meet one of the stated objectives of
the workshop was to look at what untapped
resources the Tribe already had that could
address unmet needs.
Again using Census figures, they realized
that there were approximately 2,700
households on the Reservation, and 44 percent
were households with a married couple living
alone. The tribe realized that these
households were an untapped resource
for foster care providers necessary to
address the needs of some of these
children and their families through times
of transition. Likewise, the extended
family nature of tribal culture could be
integrated into custody situations.Another immediate action after the
workshop was meetings with the Law &Justice department to determine howtribal code would need to be redraftedto implement the ideas that had beendeveloped in the workshop. The JuvenileTask Force also began work on selectingthe core team to lead the work onrenovating the children’s advocacyprogram and develop a comprehensivejuvenile services program. Lastly, theybegan developing a peacemaking/familyconferencing circle as part of their activeadvocacy work.
The core team’s many duties were to work on creating a model where the newdepartment of Comprehensive JuvenileServices would track all children within thesystem from birth to adulthood based on amedical model of development rather than alegal model. Likewise, they would act as acentral referral and coordinator for childrenand families in need of service rather than the current patchwork of service providers.
The emphasis of their programs would be on prevention, early intervention, andrehabilitation rather than a more punitiveapproach. Given that central engagement, thisteam would be better able to assess children atrisk and make recommendations to theChildren’s Court as an informed advocate.Obviously, some of these steps would mean thattribal jurisdiction would be broadened with thechildren’s best interests as the standard.
The suggested staffing for this tribal
department would be two full-time positions
Lois Trevino with her grandson, Nathan.
8 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE #92
Introducing Holistic Management to people
who have never heard about it and have
not asked to learn about it can be
challenging. And while I have faced that
situation on numerous occasions, I know that
I’ve not yet had a more supportive or engaged
audience than my own family when it came to
introducing Holistic Management. Two years
ago, after attending my first week-long Certified
Educator training program, I was ready and full
of anticipation for tackling my first challenge—
bringing my family on board the Holistic
Management Express and exploring how
to manage our lives holistically. I think I
learned more from that experience than
they did.
A Garden Path
When I called a family meeting the
response of my two teenage sons, Matt
and Alex, was guarded; we don’t have
too many of those types of meetings
unless there are issues needing sorting
out, usually involving them. My wife,
Tami, was patiently supportive, although
this whole Holistic Management thing
had her wondering what I was into
this time.
We began with me explaining that I needed
their support in my learning, and they were
quick to let me know that if I needed their
participation, they were game. Starting with AtHome with Holistic Management, we had some
fun with the exercises found in the workbook.
They serve as a great introduction and gave
everyone a sense that this stuff was going to be
deep and take some thoughtful engagement.
During the introduction of the principles
and concepts of Holistic Management, I tried to
go easy on the jargon, and it seemed to pay off.
At one point my older son Matt, a college
freshman at the time, finally said, “Okay Dad, I
get it. Holistic Management helps you to make
good decisions so you can lead a better life and
accomplish what you want.” Not convinced that
he really had gotten it so quickly, I tried to
continue, “Uh, yeah, that’s essentially it, you see
Holistic Management. . . . .” but he cut me off at
the pass. “Dad, I get it. Can we move on?” Taking
the subtle cue, we moved on.
that resulted from that exercise and the many
inaccurate assumptions we flushed out in our
conversation.
We had worried that the boys got bored at
the Lake as they were away from friends and
there is no stereo, phone or TV. When we
mentioned this concern, they said what they
liked best was just hanging out together there
and getting away from everything. We had
always made sure to go to town every few days
and go to the movies and play miniature golf to
keep them entertained. They confessed that
while that was fun as well, what they liked best
were the same things we went there for—peace
and quiet and time spent with just the four of
us. Amazing. It is my favorite place to be, and
for the same reasons I love it, my boys love it.
I had no idea.
The holistic goal forming process brought
out things I had never heard my teenage
sons say. It brought out feelings we had
never expressed so clearly and in an
atmosphere and through a process that
made it easy. I got to hear my son Matt
say, “I love my life right now!” There are
no sweeter words to a parent’s ears than
to hear your child express how happy he
is. You can’t help but recognize the role
you played in making that possible.
We heard Alex talk about his deep
interest in the environment and his plans
to study various natural systems that
interest him. Tami and I heard the nicest
things about us, as parents, that we will
forever value. To hear your children tell
you they understand you are fallible, but that
they know that love is the only motivation
behind your actions, was precious. Again, the
process was so enlightening and revealed to all
of us how strong a family we are and how
much we truly care about each other.
I never would have heard those things
without us working together to try and
articulate what we want in our lives. What
came through clearly was how big an impact
our values and standards have had on our kids.
To hear them articulate that was extremely
powerful and truly satisfying. While my family
might not have had the smoothest introduction
to Holistic Management, and I stumbled
occasionally as their facilitator, I’m glad I took
the risk of introducing them to this decision-
making process. The experience made me
appreciate my family even more.
Phil Metzger is in the 2001 Certified EducatorTraining Program and lives in Norwich, New York.He can be reached at: [email protected].
Okay Dad, I Get It—Introducing Holistic Management to My Familyby Phil Metzger
One item in particular that the boys got right
away was what quality of life represented in
the holistic goal. Tami, however, struggled with
the concept. It wasn’t until I used a technique
suggested to me by my fellow trainee, Seth
Wilner, that Tami got the concept. In our
bedroom, there is a picture on the wall of a
serene garden path through large trees and
wildflowers that we had picked out together
because we find it very inviting. “It’s like that,”
I blurted out. “That is what we want our life
to be like, like that picture.” She got it
immediately, and we were on our way.
Beyond Assumptions
After two more sessions of discussion
and exercises from At Home with HolisticManagement, and of Dad explaining the
model, everyone, including me, began to tire of
listening to Dad try to explain the model. It was
time to craft our family holistic goal. As we did,
we heard things we had never heard from each
other and were amazed that more often than
not what we desired in our lives closely
mirrored each other’s wishes. In the end, the
temporary holistic goal we put to paper was
very representative of what we wanted in our
lives as a family, and it amazed me how little
difference there was in our individual opinions
of what should be included.
One particular example that surprised Tami
and I was when we used a picture of our
summer cottage on Lake Ontario to practice
mind mapping. I was amazed at the discussion
The Metzger family enjoying a vacation in Hawaii.
IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 LAND & LIVESTOCK 9
This section of IN PRACTICE tends to focus on grass and cowstories. It’s called Land and Livestock, though, and land, if youthink about it, encompasses more than grass. Many, if not most,
readers of IN PRACTICE probably also have a few trees gracing theirlandscapes. Trees are actually a major topic of conservation out here inthe semi-arid West at the moment. Last year’s fires (Colorado’s two worstforest fires in history were both burning simultaneously during thesummer of 2002), caused by record drought conditions combined with a century of fire suppression and a dearth of browsing herbivores,devastated massive tracts of forest. They were extremely hot—most likelyunnaturally hot—crown fires, resulting from exceptionally dense treegrowth and massive accumulations of fallen, dead timber. Many areasdisplayed what fire ecologists call “vertical continuity,” which means thathighly combustible fuel sources spread vertically from the forest floor,through a lower shrub canopy, up through smaller diameter trees, andthen into the crowns of larger trees. When flames climb such a fuelladder, devastation results.
Under more natural conditions, when periodic lightning-caused firesclean out a developing shrub canopy and thin out younger trees, thisoverburden of material never develops. Large herds of grazing andbrowsing herbivores also do their part in cycling carbon back into thesoil, helping suppress a buildup of woody fuel. Where the shrub andgrass plants are kept hedged and grazed by animals, fires have much less chance of starting, and if they do, they burn at a low intensity and tend not to kill large, mature trees.
Just as we attempt to mimic nature in the management of ourgrasslands, we also need to refer to nature’s model when makingmanagement decisions in the woods. So, mimicking nature in thewoods—what exactly does that mean? Does the recent spate ofpropaganda urging aggressive thinning and prescribed burning honornatural processes? Do we really know what’s natural? Does a naturalstate even exist given the current state of the world? In Holistic
Management, we don’t really manage for “natural conditions.” We managefor what we want on the land and in our lives. In most cases, it’s nosurprise that a natural state of affairs (i.e., healthily functioning ecosystemprocesses) is what we end up describing in our future landscapedescriptions, but from the perspective of the forest, what does that mean?
Megaherbivores or Fire?
Humans all over the world have acted as major instigators of fire forthousands of years. Here in America, this is true since their arrival 10,000or more years ago. But as Allan Savory likes to remind us, any fire startedby a human is not a natural fire—not even those lit by indigenouscultures. The world ecosystem wasn’t prepared for the evolution of ourability to harness this tool and use it so extensively, and ecosystemprocesses and biodiversity have suffered extensively as a result. Nature’smodel in brittle environments has historically dealt with an overburdenof vegetation, including excessive tree density, with great big herbivores.I’m not talking cows or even rhinos—I’m talking elephants. Not too longago, they, or their close relatives, thrived in every brittle environment ofthe world except Australia, where a giant marsupial filled a similar niche.In Eurasia and North America, the mastodons and mammoths dominated,while in South America the more ancient gomphotheres survived rightup to the arrival of humans.
In isolated corners of Africa, where elephants still can be found insignificant numbers, their browsing habits prevent dense, impenetrableforests from forming. Because elephants have to eat for 19 hours a dayjust to maintain themselves, the majority of their diet has to consist ofhigh energy grasses. They browse quite a bit too, especially to meetprotein needs, but lose condition rapidly without abundant grass. In other words, an elephant can’t afford to let its habitat convert to solidwoodland. Through it’s browsing behavior (which includes knocking
LAND LIVESTOCK& A Special Section ofIN PRACTICE
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 #92
In our timber enterprise, we work toward our future landscapedescription, splitting our 900 acres of timber into six managementblocks. One block had a high percentage of straight, large diameterEngleman spruce which we are now marketing as house logs for loghome construction.
Into the Woods—Holistic Decisions in the Forestby Jim Howell
continued on page 10
10 LAND & LIVESTOCK IN PRACTICE #92
over and killing entire trees, not just browsing branches), elephants meetmuch of their protein needs, and they maintain a savanna-like settingwith lots of grass. Research in Tsavo National Park in Kenya suggests thatelephants wantonly knock over trees without browsing the branches at all, presumably to merely maintain a more abundantgrassland.
So, the question is, what do we have to do to return ourforests to a healthy condition? Leaving them alone andsuppressing all disturbance has led us to the mess we’re intoday. Do we attempt to manage for slow, cool burns? Do weimitate elephants and mastondons with our chainsaws? Whatare some practical guidelines that forest owners can refer towhen tackling the management of their woodlands? That’swhat this article is all about.
A Case Study on the Howell Ranch
Like lots of the stuff I write, this one is going to comelargely from my own personal experience. I also will refer toa book I recently came across called Wild Logging, by BryanFoster. That title intrigued me from the second I read it. Ifwe are to mimic nature, that means we have to imitate awild, and untamed, model. I wish I’d have had the book six years ago when we began to implement our forestmanagement plan on our high place. We’ve done a lot ofgood things in our forest, but have made some mistakes, too. Wild Logging would have steered us clear of some ofour setbacks.
We have roughly 400 acres of timbered country lying at an elevationof about 9,500 feet (2,894 meters). It’s a mixed stand of evergreen conifersand deciduous aspen trees. In some places the conifers dominate, and in others the aspen take over. The conifersconsist of Engleman spruce, blue spruce, inland Douglas fir, and subalpine fir. With its straight lines, minimal taper from butt to tip, andoverall abundance, the Engleman spruce is our most valuable species. Like nearly everywhere else in the West, our forest has suffered from alack of management over the past 100 years. My granddad “high-graded”the biggest, most valuable Doug fir trees over the course of several cuts in the ‘40s and again in the ‘70s.
The logging crews also pulled out the largest Englemans, particularlyin the ‘70s. This opened up areas for seedlings to establish, and the resultin 1997, when Daniela and I returned to Colorado to begin managing thisplace, was a dense stand of relatively small diameter timber, lots of deadand dying trees from beetle infestations, and an incredibly fire-pronelandscape. This was especially so in areas dominated by the conifers.Because of heavy shading, very little to no understory existed on theforest floor. In the mixed forests containing significant aspen, many ofthose aspen were diseased and nearing the end of their lifespans. Manywere falling over during spring windstorms. The red tree squirrels seemed to be thriving, but not much other wildlife seemed to appreciatethe landscape we had inadvertently created.
Holistic Management forces us to get really clear on how our land has to look if it’s going to sustain our economic needs and human valuesfar into the future. For us, that means that our spruce and mixed
spruce/fir/aspen forests need to display a wide range of age structureand density, multiple canopy layers, and vigorous and productive annualgrowth. The forest also has to contain enough standing and fallen deadtimber to support a diverse wildlife population of birds, small mammals,and insects. To support populations of large wild and domesticherbivores, it also must display a mosaic of more open areas to permitthe development of an understory of grasses, forbs, and shrubs. We hadspots that looked like this, but the majority of the forest was a long ways from this description, so we had to do something.
Getting Started
Since we were more familiar with how to manage cows and grassthan trees, we hired a consulting forester to come in and give us a littledirection. We knew where we wanted to go, but weren’t real clear onhow to go about getting there. We explained to our hired forester howwe wanted our country to look, and he pointed out lots of things that we were previously unaware of, such as the amount of beetle infestationwe had and the degree to which the aspen was diseased. He also did aforest inventory and gave us a clue as to just how much standing timberwe really had. Through a combination of his expertise and our vision, we got to work that first fall of 1997.
We first determined which areas of our forest were in the most direneed of immediate attention and focused our efforts there. Methodicallyand purposefully, we began to walk grid patterns through the forest, andliterally looked at thousands of individual trees. Is this tree diseased andan obvious candidate for removal? Is it an old growth specimen andtherefore providing critical habitat needs and serving as a valuable seedsource? Will removing this large tree “release” the several smaller trees inits immediate vicinity, resulting in an overall greater amount of sunlightharvest and tree growth in that patch of woods? Or should those threesmaller, twisted, forked trees be harvested instead of the nice, straight,large diameter tree in the middle—a tree that will be a valuable log inanother 20 years? How will the removal of a tree, or patch of trees, affectbird nesting, the abundance of elk forage, or small mammal cover?
In Wild Logging, Foster describes the operation of Ben Love, an
Holistic Decisions in the Forestcontinued from page 9
This was typical density in our previously fire-prone forest with mixed stands ofspruce, fir, and aspen prior to commencement of our forest management programin October 1998.
IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 LAND & LIVESTOCK 11
ones, too. The loggers weren’t the only ones with an economic interest.My family also was counting on some reasonable income, so we had theincentive to take some good trees as well. Luckily, there were (still are) lotsof good ones that needed to be thinned, so everybody ended up happy.
So that was year one. It was a little disconcerting to see all those treesbeing hauled off the ranch, the trails left by the log skidders, and all thatslash on the ground. I grew up cherishing our forest and resenting theugly patches left by past logging crews. It was a tough decision to allowthem back in. But we still had a forest, and, at least in terms of treedensity and our desire for a more open, park-like landscape, it was a lotcloser to our future landscape description than it was a few monthsprevious. Only time would tell if we’d made the right decisions.
Developing a Plan
We logged about 60 acres that fall, and that winter Daniela and Idecided we needed to come up with a well-conceived overall forestmanagement plan for the whole ranch if we were going to continuedoing this. We conceded that there were still lots of old aspen thatneeded to be harvested before they toppled and were rendered useless,and that it would be good to continue thinning the diseased areas, but we wanted to be sure we were doing the right thing. Most significantly,we wanted to come up with a plan that honored our future landscapedescription, but that also ensured a steady stream of income long into the future. That meant we had to harvest within the annual growth rateof our forest. In other words, we knew we didn’t want to take out anymore tree volume per year than was being annually produced over theranch as a whole.
We split the forest up into six management blocks according to specificfeatures of the forest. Most blocks were mixed forests, but some had moreimmediately merchantable trees than others. One big block was 90 percent
aspen, the result of a fire that passed through about 80 yearsprevious. One block had a high percentage of straight, largediameter Engleman spruce. One block out on an isolatedridge escaped the old fire just to its south and contained ourhighest numbers of old growth (200+ years) Douglas fir. Ineach block, we detailed the species present and their relativeabundance, described past management history, madeestimates of total harvestable board feet of timber, describedspecifically how that block fit into our future landscapedescription, described its wildlife attributes and habitat niches,and laid out future management plans over a 20 year period.Over the ranch as a whole, we estimated how many boardfeet of conifers and truckloads of aspen we could sustainablyharvest on an annual basis, forever.
In late May of year two, just after enough snow finallymelted off the road, I made it up into the country that weworked on the previous fall. Lots of things seemed to behappening on the forest floor. Forbs and grasses appeared tobe establishing all over, and the slash close to the soil surfacewas covered in thick fungus. As the spring and summerprogressed, the country really came alive, producing moreunderstory vegetation than it ever had in my lifetime. Elkscattered through the trees nearly every time we arrived.
That summer, we hired a fantastic two-man logging crew to come harvesta good chunk of our older aspen in the mixed forests.
Then, in the spring of year three, we suffered our first hard lesson.
independent forestry consultant and logger near Kalispell, Montana. Love practices what he calls “Zen logging,” the core philosophy of whichis to focus just as much on what you leave in the forest as what youremove. Foster describes how Love approached one of his client’s 40-acreblocks of forest:
“When Love first came to these 40 acres, he spent a full dayjust walking it. He listened for birds and noted the sizes of treesthat different bird species were using for nests. He looked foranimal tracks, which told him where the animals fed and traveled.Ospreys, herons, and kingfishers hunted in the pond, red squirrelsnested in limbs, and snowshoe hare hid in dog-hair thickets toelude predatory goshawks and owls. Love looked for old stumpsthat told him when the area was last harvested and which treespecies had grown there. . . . Love saves dominant trees that havebark thick enough to resist fire and thins out small competingtrees, while leaving some of the wood on the ground for nutrientrecharge. He cuts down patches of small trees that act as firetinder, although he retains some of the dense growth for wildlifecover. Love prunes maple and serviceberry in the understory toencourage green browse, for example, but leaves some thickets for bird nests.” In his promotional pamphlet, Love states: “Like a wolf who spots
the cripples in a caribou herd, you must identify a surplus that can beremoved without harming the integrity and nature of the pre-settlementforest. You must respect the dominant trees in the forest as mature andbattle-tested bucks to be saved.”
Back on our place, while a lot of thought was put into all of theseecological considerations, we also had to think about the crew that wouldactually be doing the logging. It would be fantastic to be able to removemostly diseased, deformed trees, as well as lots of the small diameter stuff
This is a typical view of how our forest looks now (September 2003). We are workingtoward a more open park-like setting, with multiple canopy layers, a diverse agestructure of diverse tree species, and an abundant understory.
that the mastodons should be knocking over. But the logger has to make a living, and there is currently not much of a market for small diameter,deformed, diseased trees. The crew we had working were good sports,however, and they took lots of trees they probably would have ratherleft in the forest, but we had to even the loads out with some good continued on page 12
Upon arriving to the block logged in year one, we were devastated tofind hundreds of trees blown to the ground by the wind. In March orApril of that year, western Colorado received incredibly strong winds outof the east, which is the opposite direction from which they usuallyarrive. When a stand of trees is thinned, the wind can whistle through itmuch more fiercely than under denser conditions. It takes the remainingtrees several yearsto develop thestronger rootsystems necessaryto withstand strongwind events.
If unusuallystrong winds doarrive, andespecially if theyarrive from anunusual direction, athinned stand oftimber can behighly susceptibleto blowdown. That’swhat happened tous. Due to theblowdown, thatblock of forest wasopened to asignificantly greaterdegree than calledfor in our futurelandscapedescription.Thankfully, wewere able to getback our two mancrew from the year before, and were able to salvage the majority of thosetrees—about 1,000 in all—in addition to about 20 more loads of old aspen.
The good news was that the understory vegetation was continuing toexplode—not just an impressive diversity of grasses, but a menagerie ofhighly palatable, incredibly vigorous forbs. We learned that our level ofthinning in year one was too extreme to successfully survive strong windevents, and vowed to leave more trees as we worked our way throughthe other blocks.
Hands-on in the Woods
By year four, we had worked our way through thousands of oldaspen and much of our beetle infested patches of spruce and fir, andwere ready to drop back to our sustainable annual level of harvest. AsFoster emphasizes in Wild Logging, “The growth rate should generally bethe ceiling for your harvest volume; this way you are harvesting theinterest from the forest, not the principal.” That level wasn’t sufficient toattract a logging crew—not even the two-man crew that had done such agreat job for us. Faced with the proposition of having to change hats andbecome a logger, I called around to several sawmills and found out that I
could make just as much or more money logging as I could cowboying.I negotiated a contract with the sawmill just down the highway,
bought a good Husqvarna chainsaw, and for a couple of days a week Iswitched out my riding chaps for a new pair of logging chaps. I talkedmy dad into using our small John Deere farm tractor for a skidder, andwe got to work, harvesting five semi-loads a year (about 25,000 board feet) in both years four and five. We also diversified into corral poles inyear four, and sold about 600 of them that summer. I enjoyed the timewe spent working in the woods (not sure my dad feels the same way),but by the time I’d cut and skidded five loads, I concluded that I
preferred punchingcows over running achainsaw.
As our formerlogging contractor,Dave Goodrich, toldme once, “Logging ishonest work.” That’sfor sure. We have plansto eventually buy ateam of draft horses tohandle our logskidding chores. Myassumption is thathorse logging will bemore fun thanskidding with a tractor,but I’ll have to get back to you on that.
Since year three,when we had theblowdown event, ourlevel of harvest has been less intensive, and blowdown hasn’t been an issue. Theunderstory continues to improve every year,and we are harvesting
about three times the forage from the logged blocks than we did in thepast. The elk hunting is getting better every year, and the forest isgenerating solar dollars. The only thing happening that doesn’t excite us toomuch is the density of aspen regeneration. We opened up a lot of country,and expected it to stay open and maintain the park-like setting we hadcreated, but the aspen had other plans. It regenerates asexually from roots,and if the level of harvest is too intense, saplings emerge everywhere.
For a couple years we thought the elk were going to stay on top of it, but last year it was obviously getting ahead of them, and this yearit’s really taking off. The good news is that there is a strong local market for aspen saplings for landscaping purposes, so that is going to be next spring’s project. Last year and this year, we have been too busy with other projects to do much in the forest, but the good thingabout trees is that they’re pretty patient. They’ll still be there when themastodon (the nickname I gave my chainsaw) returns to the woods.
For landowners striving to learn more about managing their forests for economic and ecological soundness, pick up a copy of Bryan Foster’s Wild Logging, published by Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula , Montana, 2003.
12 LAND & LIVESTOCK IN PRACTICE #92
The left photograph is a view of a healing log skid trail taken in June 2000, two years afterlogging but before grazing with cattle. Note abundant grasses and forbs especially on the trail’sedge. The right photograph is the same view in early September 2003. Note the abundance of aspensaplings, which weren’t present three years previously. This photograph was taken after cattlegrazed this area.
Holistic Decisions in the Forestcontinued from page 11
IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 LAND & LIVESTOCK 13
dove flash above the landscape, and pronghorn antelope sprint across the open, grassy plains.
Close to two years ago, Chris tracked down and bought a herd of 52 elk from a struggling farm in Minnesota. Merriam’s elk, an extinctNorth American subspecies, herded across the west Texas deserts up to the turn of the 19th century. Now, thanks to the Gills, the next bestthing—the Rocky Mountain elk—calls the Trans-Pecos home. It’s a diverse,fantastic place. For a hunter or wildlife enthusiast, it’s paradise.
Their hunting culture and love of wild, remote landscapes drew theGills to this spot. Without this background—this affinity for wilderness—the Gills would probably be flying past this desert ranch just as everyoneelse. I’ve spent a total of about a week with the Gills on Circle Ranch, and not just with Chris and Laura. I’ve met the whole family, and theircontagious enthusiasm for this place impressed me deeply. With theexception of mealtimes and bedtimes, the cozy, attractive ranch houseand its surrounding oasis stay empty. The Gills, every one of them, areout in their habitat, hiking, hunting, exploring, working, and learning their
new place. It’s heartening to see and experience.
New Perspectives
Upon acquiring the ranch,the Gills had no plans ofbecoming ranchers. Theybought the place for the wild animals, and had nointerest in their domesticcounterparts. But a meetingwith Allan Savory openedtheir minds to newpossibilities. They learnedfrom Allan that theconcentrated, periodic grazing and hoof action ofherbivores, wild or domestic,can be a good thing if it’smanaged right. In their sort
of highly brittle country, it’s not just good, it’s vital. Overrest not onlystagnates and eventually kills perennial grass plants; it also renders themhighly unpalatable and under-nourishing to wild herbivores.
Suddenly, the Gills found themselves faced with becoming ranchers,but without much of an idea of how to go about it. Since The SavoryCenter would soon be launching their Ranch and Rangeland ManagerTraining Program, Chris decided to sign up. His experiences in theprogram convinced him that other family members needed to attend aswell. That was the only way, he reasoned, to really get everybody on thesame page. Since they are all partial owners, that was critical. So duringthe second year of the program, Laura, daughter Carolyn, and daughter-in-law Sterling began their Holistic Management education as well.
Grazing Planning Deliberations
Immediately after the girls’ first session in August of 2002, I made my first trip to Circle Ranch. My task was to facilitate a dormant seasongrazing planning session, and to establish some initial biologicalmonitoring transects. With such a great diversity of terrain—flat plains,steep cliffs, rugged limestone mountains, lush drainages, and shrubby
Diablo Peak, at 6,519 feet (1,986 meters) above sea level, is thehighest point on the Circle Ranch. In Spanish, diablo means devil,and it’s a fitting name for this apex. It caps the adjacent 30,000
plus acres (12,146 hectares) of wild and chaotic terrain, full of rattlesnakes,tarantulas, jagged rocks, and thorny scrubland. North of the sleepy townof Van Horn, and deep into the western extreme of Texas known as theTrans-Pecos, Circle Ranch lies in the sort of country that most modernday human beings prefer to drive around or through as fast as possible.
The former owner jokedthat the rain prefers to avoidCircle Ranch, which is how itacquired its name: “the rain justcircles around that place.” Afew stout and hardy families—living remnants of a long, deepranching culture—still call theTrans-Pecos home. Fewer stillchoose to establish here fromother, less severe walks of life,but, incredibly, such people doexist. I’ve had the great fortuneto meet and work with such afamily over the past coupleyears—the Gills.
Chris and Laura Gill comefrom a long line of keenoutdoorsmen (see INPRACTICE #84 for a briefintroduction to the Gills and Circle Ranch). Laura’s father, William Negley,successfully hunted the African “Big 5” (elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, andbuffalo) with a primitive recurve bow under the rules of fair chase, withno rifle backup whatsoever. He took his last elephant, also with arecurve, at the age of 70. Chris and Laura regularly fish in Patagonia, andhave taken other fishing excursions deep into the Falkland Islands,Iceland, Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Amazon Basin.
Love of the Wild
They and their children bought Circle Ranch in 1999 for its long terminvestment value, but more immediately, for its diverse and abundantwildlife. The Sierra Diablo Mountains, which transect a large swath of theranch, contain one of west Texas’ most successful reintroducedpopulations of desert bighorn sheep. The severe, gnarled cliffs of theSierra Diablo escarpment are deceptively productive, harboring a diversityof desert forbs, grasses, succulents, and shrubs. Their extreme aspect alsoprovides the bighorns with the rugged escape terrain they depend on forpredator evasion. On the mountain tops, down into the sloping foothills,on the desert mesas, and even down in the desert shrub thickets, desertmule deer abound. Profusions of scaled quail and gambel’s quail, andoccasionally mearn’s quail, flush out of the brushy draws, white-winged
On the Circle Ranch—Nourishing Wildernessby Jim Howell
Chris and Laura Gill come from a long line of keen outdoorsmen. They andtheir children bought the Circle Ranch for its diverse and abundant wildlife. The headquarters sit below the Sierra Diablo escarpment...
continued on page 14
14 LAND & LIVESTOCK IN PRACTICE #92
desert flats—we had our work cut out for us. Based on theprincipal of “greatest numbers for the shortest time,” andwithout any desire to own their own livestock, the Gills hadpreviously settled on a policy of seasonal contract grazingduring the winter.
The Gills had already developed and implemented twograzing plans, but insufficient water infrastructure limited thesize of their herd and precluded large areas of the ranch frombeing properly grazed. During the months prior to my visit,Charlie King, the versatile and ever-cheerful Circle Ranchmanager, had ramrodded the installation of several miles of new pipe, booster pumps, and new water points. With theseimprovements, we could count the whole ranch as available forgrazing during the winter of 2002-2003.
But did it all need to be grazed? Huge tracts of the ranchobviously did. Years of little grazing pressure and partial rest had resulted inthousands of acres of overrested grasses and soil surfaces. Like most aridranches, the opposite condition also characterized broad tracts of country.The easy, flat, and rolling pastures, with well-distributed and abundant watersources, had been continuously hammered and severely overgrazed fordecades. A lot of that country is home to scattered bunches of pronghornantelope, and the Gills are passionate about increasing their numbers.
The weak link in the life cycle of a pronghorn occurs during the firstfew weeks of life, when they are highly vulnerable to coyote predation.Abundant, tall vegetative cover, where the scentless pronghorn fawns canbe successfully hidden by their mothers, provides the critical habitatfeature necessary for increased fawn survival. This country had been soseverely overgrazed that even the more potentially productive draws,where runoff from intense thunderstorms concentrates to support a moredense and abundant plant community, had insufficient fawning cover.
Up out of the draws, many plants—approaching 40 percent—weredead, probably from a combination of years of management abuse andthe extended drought that has plagued the Southwest for a decade now.The plants still alive didn’t need to be grazed. They were a long, longways from being overrested. The draws needed the chance to accumulatesignificant quantities of older vegetation for pronghorn fawn cover.
So those were the ecological considerations. What about economics?The primary purpose of the grazing enterprise isn’t to make money. If itdoes turn a profit (and so far it has), that’s great, but their primary focuswith the cattle is on using them to improve habitat for wildlife. Takinginto account all of these considerations, last year we made the decisionnot to graze several thousand acres of this historically overgrazed,topographically gentle, pronghorn-inhabited country.
Just this fall the Gills gave me another chance to come help with the2003-2004 winter grazing plan. We started off by going over last year’splan, discussing what did and didn’t work, what Charlie learned, how thecurrent season was shaping up relative to last year’s, etc. We made acouple of logistical errors in planning our cattle moves last year, but onthe whole, and considering we planned the use of country in whichneither Charlie nor the cattle had had much or any experience, the planworked awfully well.
Higher stock densities and better water availability enabled Charlieto push the cattle into much of the overrested country, mainly in the
mountains, and big areas ended the winter minus their rank overburden.
Nourishing Wildernesscontinued from page 13
This highly productive sacaton draw is one of the many natural assets of theCircle Ranch, which feeds a diverse wildlife population including bighorn, desert,mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and three kinds of quail.
A lot of those areas were right on the edge of the Sierra Diabloescarpment, right where the bighorns hang out. On my visit last week,those pastures were growing vigorously and abundantly—good news forthe wild sheep.
The flat country that we left out of last year’s plan was also lookingbetter. The dead plants were still dead, but the plants that were sparedstill contained last year’s growth, and this year’s leaves, on the whole,were vigorously climbing through it. We estimated there to be two tothree times the forage volume on these spots compared to last year. Themore productive draws had also accumulated significant areas of coverfor the pronghorn fawns, and I’ll be darned if the little guys weren’trunning all over the place. As we drove around the ranch, however,penetrating areas that were skipped during last year’s forage inventory,we realized there was still tons of work to be done.
On the whole, we underestimated the forage on hand last year, andthe cattle didn’t have sufficient incentive to use big areas of country—areas that were a lot more overrrested than overgrazed. In order to getthe cattle into those areas, and to condition that forage for the wildherbivores, cattle numbers and stock density needed to increase. To keepthe animals from hanging on the easy, historically overgrazed country,where the forage on the whole is much more palatable (due to theabsence of any older growth in the plants), we made the collectivedecision that a little strategically-placed, portable electric fencing would be needed. Charlie said he could get it done, so we planned it out. It’s achallenging but doable plan, and Charlie will learn a lot as the winterprogresses. I look forward to getting back to see what I can learn.
The Gill Family is still in its infancy on the Circle Ranch. There is a lotto learn, a lot of work to be done, a lot of land to heal. The Gills are on ahabitat enhancement mission, and as Chris emphasizes, “the best habitatfor cattle is also the best habitat for our wild herbivores. One doesn’texclude the other; they enhance each other. We have essentially fivespecies of large herbivore here—cattle, bighorns, mule deer, pronghorn,and elk. Given our habitat diversity and the evolutionary history of thiscountry, I think we should have at least 12 species on this land. Whatshould be here is mostly extinct, so we have to find exotics to fill theniches left by the extinct natives, and learn how to manage them.”
That’s big thinking, but with their zest for nature, their love of wildlife and hunting, their open minds, and their long term perspective,the future looks promising.
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 15
Holistic Managers Win Awards
Two long-time Savory Center members,
the Work Ranch and Frasier Farms, have won the National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association’s 2003 Environmental Award for
their respective regions.
The Environmental Stewardship Award
Program recognizes progressive cattle
producers who incorporate innovative,
conservation-friendly and cost-effective
stewardship practices into their operations.
Judges also consider the nominees’ leadership
abilities, the productivity and profitability of
their operations, and their involvement with
local, regional and national efforts to improve
stewardship practices and the public
perception of the cattle industry.
The George and Elaine Work family, who
own and operate a cattle ranch east of San
Miguel in southeastern Monterey County, won
the 2003 Environmental Stewardship Award
for Region 6.
The Works were nominated by The Nature
Conservancy because they recognize “that
here on the Central Coast, and throughout
California, ranching families like the Works are
responsible for maintaining important natural
areas, wildlife habitat and wildlife corridors,”
said Conservancy Field Representative
Anne McMahon.
Marshall Frasier, and his sons Joe, Mark,
and Chris, won the same Environmental
Stewardship Award for Region 5. Frasier
Farms is a family owned and operated ranch
in Woodrow and Limon, Colorado.
Kim Burgess, manager of policy for the
Colorado Division of Wildlife notes that “the
Frasiers have actively managed their properties
for the benefit of wildlife species. These
management practices have been evaluated,
and the Frasiers have received the highest
possible scores for maintenance of valuable
habitat and actions to improve habitat.”
Congratulations to both the Work Ranch
and Frasier Farms.
Everyone enjoyedhearing the
walkabout leaders’observations about
land and how tointerpret it.
(Clockwise fromtop left): Allan
Savory, Walt Davis,Malcolm Beck, and
Steve Rich.
Nothing like finedining in fresh airwith interesting peoplefrom six countries toprompt greatconversations.
Peggy Sechristspeaking at theRendezvous2003 openingceremony.
Rendezvous Central at the L.O. Ranch.
Rendezvous Riproaring Success
The Savory Center would like to extend a whole hearted thanks to
HRM of Texas and Clint Josey for their outstanding efforts in
making Rendezvous 2003, held September 26-28 in Leo, Texas at Clint
Josey’s L.O. Ranch, a great success. With a full schedule of workshops
to choose from participants had a hard time choosing.
One of the highlights of the Rendezvous, besides the gourmet food
provided by Clint Josey, was the Saturday morning walkabout, which
involved round-robin sessions with Allan Savory, Walt Davis, Steve
Savory Center Bulletin Board
Rich, and Malcolm Beck. Everyone came away feeling renewed,
recharged, and recommitted to spreading the word about Holistic
Management.
Special thanks to Pat Richardson and her Rendezvous committee
for their tireless efforts in making this a memorable experience for
everyone. Rumor has it that Dr. Manuel Casas will pick up the
challenge and we’ll have the next Holistic Management Gathering in
Chapa de Mota, Mexico in 2005.
16 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE #92
One of the aspects of Holistic
Management that first appealed to
me was the emphasis on the human
resource. It was the first program I had come
across in agriculture that even acknowledged
the importance of people, let alone referred
to them as the most underutilized resource.
Since then and through the process of
becoming a Certified Educator, I have
continued to be interested in the people side
of things. This has led, in addition to working
in our own family ranching operation, to
working with other families in business. One
of the families I have learned a great deal
from is the Campbell family.
Evolving Goal
The Don and Bev Campbell family, from B-
C Ranch at Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan,
Canada, has been managing holistically for
over 15 years. Over that time, as their children,
Scott, Mark, Marie and Grace have grown,
married, chosen career paths, and had
children, Don and Bev realized it was
important to revisit their holistic goal, develop
a transition plan and, at the same time, build
their team. I had the opportunity to work
with them and guide that process during two
sessions, each one and a half days long, in
which we revisited the family’s holistic goal,
looked at roles and responsibilities, legal
structure, remuneration and benefits and
created a long-range plan.
From working with them, I would have to
say that their commitment to strengthening
the “team,” how their family works together,
is a key ingredient in their success as a family
and as a business.
In Holistic Management, development of a
holistic goal, and the values intrinsic to this
process, is a powerful tool for families in
business. The trust and acceptance and level
of open, honest communication required to
share values and develop a holistic goal builds
strength and increases commitment. The
Campbells believe the goal setting is essential
because it helps them understand each other
and have a common vision. Or as Don puts it,
“Goal setting helps us walk our talk and hold
ourselves and each other accountable.”
The People Part
But even with a new holistic goal, the
Campbells knew that management is an
ongoing challenge. The Campbells say some of
the biggest challenges they face being in a
family ranching operation are: prioritizing
objectives, communication, transitioning the
operation, having regular meetings, and
accepting differences in other people. Don
adds, “Holistic Management helped us realize
that people are
the most
important. This
allowed us to
set time aside
for serious goal
setting and
team building.
This time
helped us
know each
other better
and focus on
our common
vision, not our
differences.
Each person is
important and
unique, all contribute.”
As part of their management structure, the
Campbells divided their business into four
parts: people, finance, marketing and
production. It is difficult for one person to
wear all these hats, but a family business has
an advantage with more people of differing
skills. And as Don notes, “This division of
labor leads to clear communication and
responsibility. All people have input, but one
specific person is responsible.” However,
management of the ranch is by consensus, and
ownership of the ranch is divided equally.
But consensus and collaborative decision-
making only works if there is a high level of
trust built upon a strong foundation of
effective communication and follow through
of proposed action. It requires a commitment
of working through the hard stuff as well as
celebrating the successes.
Putting this into practice sometimes
requires a great leap from where people
normally operate. Often this is one of the
most difficult aspects of goal development,
facing those unspoken issues. It can be much
easier to go build fences or work on books,
than to take the time to sit down with those
we work and live with and share what is
truly important to us. But the benefits to
building trust and, hence, a stronger, more
united team are immeasurable. It is also a
process and not just a one-time event.
Making a commitment to regular and
effective meetings is, therefore, critical to good
relationships and positive results. Such
meetings may sound simple, but they are
sometimes hard to execute, as the Campbells
have found. Nonetheless, they have committed
to monthly meetings for all the family and
weekly Monday morning meetings for those
working directly on the ranch. They keep
persevering because they believe it is
important to continually work on improving
communication; it helps to assure long-term
success, and the more people involved, the
more important this commitment is.
Change Takes Time
It is important to remember that our
operations and families are constantly
changing. Flexibility, something I think Holistic
Management encourages, is important to all
aspects of the operation. In the book, TheDaughter Also Rises, author Anne Francis
writes, “Human frailty and our ability to both
manage it and embrace it are part of being a
healthy adult and a healthy family. Commit
yourself to the idea that change takes time; it is
often difficult and always requires individual
responsibility, courage and hope.” Francis also
says, “Healthy business families, like healthy
families in general, are able to build upon their
common interests and values so they support
and trust one another, address and solve
problems openly, exercise leadership flexibly
and appropriately, and plan for the future
growth of their business collaboratively.”
This quote certainly describes the
Campbells. Their work on developing goals
and plans has benefited them greatly. They feel
it has given them clearer direction and helps
them to make better decisions. Their team is
strong because all the members feel committed
to be part of the team, and they each have a
better understanding of their team members.
These characteristics put the Campbell family
ahead of the pack when it comes to families in
business, and they believe that Holistic
Management has played a big role in helping
them get to where they are today.
Savory Center ForumA Family Businessby Kelly Sidoryk
Kell Sidoryk and hernephew, Dalen.
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 17
ARIZONAKitty BoiceP.O. Box 745, Sonoita, AZ 85637520/907-5574; [email protected]
ARKANSAS
Preston SullivanP.O. Box 4483, Fayetteville, AR 72702479/443-0609; 479/442-9824 (w) [email protected]
CALIFORNIA
Monte Bell325 Meadowood Dr., Orland, CA 95963530/865-3246; [email protected]
Julie Bohannon652 Milo Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90042323/[email protected]
Bill Burrows12250 Colyear Springs Rd.Red Bluff, CA 96080530/529-1535; [email protected]
Richard King1675 Adobe Rd., Petaluma, CA 94954707/769-1490; 707/794-8692 (w)[email protected]
Christopher PeckP.O. Box 2286, Sebastopol, CA 95472707/[email protected]
COLORADO
Cindy Dvergsten17702 County Rd. 23, Dolores, CO 81323970/[email protected]
Rio de la VistaP.O. Box 777, Monte Vista, CO 81144 719/852-2211; [email protected]
Daniela and Jim HowellP.O. Box 67, Cimarron, CO 81220-0067970/[email protected]
Tim McGafficP.O. Box 476, Ignacio, CO 81137970/946-9957; [email protected]
Chadwick McKellar16775 Southwood Dr.Colorado Springs, CO 80908719/495-4641; [email protected]
NEW MEXICO
❖ Ann AdamsThe Savory Center1010 Tijeras NWAlbuquerque, NM 87102505/[email protected]
Amy Driggs1131 Los Tomases NWAlbuquerque, NM 87102505/[email protected]
Kirk GadziaP.O. Box 1100Bernalillo, NM 87004505/867-4685; fax: 505/[email protected]
Ken Jacobson12101 Menaul Blvd. NE, Ste AAlbuquerque, NM 87112505/[email protected]
❖ Kelly PasztorThe Savory Center1010 Tijeras NW,Albuquerque, NM 87102505/[email protected]
Sue ProbartP.O. Box 81827Albuquerque, NM 87198505/[email protected]
Vicki Turpen03 El Nido Amado SWAlbuquerque, NM 87121505/873-0473; [email protected]
Arne VanderburgP.O. Box 904Cedar Crest, NM 87008505/[email protected]
NORTH CAROLINA
Sam Bingham394 Vanderbilt Rd.Asheville, NC 28803828/274-1309; [email protected]
NORTH DAKOTA
❖ Wayne BerryUniversity of North Dakota—WillistonP.O. Box 1326; Williston, ND 58802 701/774-4269 or 701/[email protected]
OHIO
❖ Deborah StinnerDepartment of Entomology OARDC1680 Madison HillWooster, OH 44691330/202-3534 (w); [email protected]
OKLAHOMAKim BarkerRT 2, Box 67Waynoka, OK 73860580/824-9011; [email protected]
Chandler McLayP.O. Box 262, Dolores, CO 81323970/[email protected]
Byron Shelton33900 Surrey Lane, Buena Vista, CO 81211719/[email protected]
GEORGIA
Constance Neely1160 Twelve Oaks Circle; Watkinsville, GA 30677706/[email protected]
IOWA
Bill Casey1800 Grand Ave.; Keokuk, IA 52632-2944319/524-5098; [email protected]
KENTUCKY
Joel Benson 1180 Fords Mill Rd.; Versailles, KY 40383859/879-6365; [email protected]
LOUISIANATina Pilione P.O. 923, Eunice, LA 70535phone/fax: 337/[email protected]
MASSACHUSETTS❖ Christine Jost Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine200 Westboro Road; North Grafton, MA 01536508/887-4763; [email protected]
MINNESOTA
Terri Goodfellow-Heyer4660 Cottonwood Lane N; Plymouth, MN 55442612/559-0099; [email protected]
MONTANA
Wayne BurlesonRT 1, Box 2780Absarokee, MT 59001406/328-6808; [email protected]
Roland Kroos4926 Itana Circle; Bozeman, MT 59715406/522-3862; [email protected]
❖ Cliff MontagneMontana State University Department of LandResources & Environmental ScienceBozeman, MT 159717406/994-5079; [email protected]
Certified Educators
UNITED STATES
❖ These Educators provide Holistic Management instruction on behalf of the institutions they represent.
To our knowledge, Certified Educators are the best qualified individuals to help others learn topractice Holistic Management and to provide them with technical assistance when necessary. On a yearlybasis, Certified Educators renew their agreement to be affiliated with the Center. This agreement requirestheir commitment to practice Holistic Management in their own lives, to seek out opportunities forstaying current with the latest developments in Holistic Management and to maintain a high standard ofethical conduct in their work.
For more information about or application forms for the U.S., Africa, or International Certified EducatorTraining Programs, contact Kelly Pasztor at the Savory Center or visit our website atwww.holisticmanagement.org/wwo_certed.cfm?
18 HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE #92
OREGONCindy Douglas2795 McMillian St.Eugene, OR 97405541/465-4882; [email protected]
Jeff GoebelP.O. Box 2503Redmond, OR [email protected]
TEXAS
Christina Allday-Bondy2703 Grennock Dr.Austin, TX 78745512/441-2019 ; [email protected]
Guy Glosson6717 Hwy 380Snyder, TX 79549806/237-2554; [email protected]
❖ R.H. (Dick) RichardsonUniversity of Texas at Austin Department of Integrative BiologyAustin, TX 78712512/471-4128; [email protected]
Doug Warnock151 Cedar Cove Rd..Ellensburg, WA 98926509/925-9127; [email protected]
WISCONSINElizabeth BirdRoom 203 Hiram Smith Hall1545 Observatory Dr.,Madison WI 53706608/265-3727; [email protected]
Larry JohnsonW886 State Road 92Brooklyn, WI 53521608/455-1685; [email protected]
WYOMINGMiles Keogh450 N. Adams Ave.Buffalo WY 82834307/684-0532; [email protected]
Tim MorrisonP.O. Box 536, Meeteese, WY 82433307/868-2354; [email protected]
Peggy Sechrist 25 Thunderbird Rd.Fredericksburg, TX 78624830/990-2529; [email protected]
WASHINGTONCraig MadsenP.O. Box 107, Edwall, WA 99008509/236-2451; [email protected]
Sandra Matheson228 E. Smith Rd., Bellingham, WA 98226360/398-7866; [email protected]
❖ Don NelsonWashington State University P.O. Box 646310, Pullman, WA 99164509/335-2922; [email protected]
Maurice RobinetteS. 16102 Wolfe Rd., Cheney, WA 99004509/299-4942; [email protected]
Lois TrevinoP.O. Box 615, Nespelem, WA 99155509/634-4410; 509/634-2430 (w)[email protected]
INTERNATIONAL
AUSTRALIAHelen Carrell“Hillside” 25 Weewondilla Rd.Glennie Heights, Warwick, QLD 437061-4-1878-5285; 61-7-4661-7383 [email protected]
Steve Hailstone5 Lampert Rd., Crafers, SA 515261-4-1882-2212; [email protected]
Graeme Hand“Inverary”Caroona Lane; Branxholme, VIC 330261-3-5578-6272; [email protected]
Mark GardnerP.O. Box 1395, Dubbo, NSW 283061-2-6882-0605; [email protected]
Brian Marshall“Lucella”; Nundle, NSW 234061-2-6769 8226; fax: 61-2-6769 [email protected]
Bruce WardP.O. Box 103, Milsons Pt., NSW 156561-2-9929-5568; fax: [email protected]
Brian Wehlburgc/o “Sunnyholt”, Injue, QLD 445461-7-4626-7187; [email protected]
CANADA
Don and Randee HalladayBox 2, Site 2, RR 1; Rocky Mountain House, AB T0M 1T0; 403/[email protected]
Noel McNaughton5704-144 St., Edmondton, AB, T6H 4H4780/432-5492; [email protected]
Len PigottBox 222, Dysart, SK SOH 1HO 306/432-4583; [email protected]
Kelly SidorykBox 374, Lloydminster, AB, S9V 0Y4403/[email protected]
CHINA/GERMANY
Dieter Albrecht2, Yuan Ming Yuan Xi LuBeijing 1009486-10-6289 1061; [email protected] (international)
MEXICO
Ivan AguirreLa InmaculadaApdo. Postal 304; Hermosillo, Sonora 83000tel/fax: [email protected]
Elco Blanco-Madrid Cristobal de Olid #307 Chihuahua Chih., 3124052-614-415-3497; fax: [email protected]
Manuel Casas-PerezCalle Amarguva No. 61, Lomas HerraduraHuixquilucan, Mexico City CP 5278552-558-291-3934; 52-588-992-0220 (w)[email protected]
Jose Ramon “Moncho” VillarAv. Las Americas #1178Fracc. CumbresSaltillo, Coahuila 2527052-844-415-1542; [email protected]
NAMIBIA
Gero Diekmann P.O. Box 363, Okahandja 9000264-62-518091; [email protected]
Colin Nott P.O. Box 11977; Windhoek264-61-228506; [email protected]
Wiebke Volkmann P.O. Box 182, Otavi, [email protected]
NEW ZEALAND
John King P.O. Box 3440, Richmond, [email protected]
SOUTH AFRICA
Sheldon BarnesP.O. Box 300; Kimberly 8300
Johan BlomP.O. Box 568, Graaf-Reinet [email protected]
Ian Mitchell-Innes P.O. Box 52, Elandslaagte [email protected]
Norman Neave Box 141, Mtubatuba [email protected]
Dick Richardson P.O. Box 1806, Vryburg 8600tel/fax: 27-53-927-4367 [email protected]
Colleen ToddP.O. Box 21, Hoedspruit 138027-82-335-3901 (cell)[email protected]
ZIMBABWE
Mutizwa MukutePELUM Association Regional DeskP.O. Box MP 1059, Mount Pleasant, Harare263-4-74470/744117fax: [email protected]
Liberty Mabhena Spring CabinetP.O. Box 853, Harare263-4-210021/2; 263-4-210577/8fax: 263-4-210273
Sister Maria Chiedza Mutasa Bandolfi ConventP.O. Box 900, Masvingo263-39-7699, 263-39-7530
Elias NcubeP. Bag 5950, Victoria [email protected]
HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE • NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003 19
ARIZONAHRM of ArizonaNorm Lowe2660 E. Hemberg, Flagstaff, AZ 86004928/214-0040; [email protected]
CALIFORNIAHolistic Management of CaliforniaTom Walther, newsletter editor5550 Griffin St., Oakland, CA 94605510/530-6410; [email protected]
COLORADOColorado Branch of the Center For Holistic ManagementJim and Daniela Howell newletter editors1661 Sonoma Court, Montrose, CO 81401970/249-0353;[email protected]
GEORGIA
Constance Neely1160 Twelve Oaks CircleWatkinsville, GA 30677706/[email protected]
MONTANA
Beartooth Management Club Wayne BurlesonRT 1, Box 2780, Absarokee, MT 59001406/328-6808; [email protected]
Local Networks There are several branch organizations or groups
affiliated with the Center in the U.S. and abroad (some publish their own
newsletters.) We encourage you to contact the group closest to you:
TEXASHRM of TexasPeggy Jones, newsletter editor101 Hill View TrailDripping Springs, TX 78620512/[email protected]
West Station for HolisticManagementPeggy MaddoxP.O. Box 694Ozona, TX 76943325/[email protected]
AUSTRALIAHolistic Decision Making Association(AUST+NZ)Lennie ChaplainP.O. Box 1157Moree NSW, 2400tel: [email protected]
CANADACanadian Holistic ManagementLee PengillyBox 216, Stirling, AB, T0K 2E0403/327-9262
MEXICOFundación para Fomentar el Manejo Holístico, A.C. Jose Ramon Villar, PresidentAve. Las Americas #1178
United States
International
NEW YORKRegional Farm & Food ProjectTracy Frisch, contact person148 Central Ave., 2nd floorAlbany, NY 12206; 518/427-6537
USDA/NRCS - Central NY RC&DPhil Metzger, contact person99 North Broad St., Norwich, NY 13815607/334-3231, ext. [email protected]
NORTHWESTManaging WholesPeter Donovan501 South St., Enterprise, OR 97828-1345541/426-2145www.managingwholes.com
OKLAHOMA
Oklahoma Land Stewardship AllianceCharles GriffithsRoute 5, Box E44, Ardmore, OK 73401580/223-7471; [email protected]
PENNSYLVANIANorthern Penn NetworkJim Weaver, contact personRD #6, Box 205, Wellsboro, PA 16901717/724-7788; [email protected]
Fracc. Cumbres Saltillo, Coahuila 25270tel/fax: [email protected]
NAMIBIANamibia Centre for Holistic ManagementAnja Denker, contact personP.O. Box 23600Windhoek 9000tel/fax: [email protected]
SOUTH AFRICACommunity Dynamics Judy RichardsonP.O. Box 1806Vryburg 8600tel/fax: [email protected]
Come Visit Us!
We Offer:• Guided Bush Walks• Horseback Tours• Game-Viewing Drives• Anti-Poaching Patrol Experience• And much more!In an unforgettable setting with comfy lodging, memorable meals
AT DIMBANGOMBECome Visit Us!
AT DIMBANGOMBE
Private Bag 5950 Roger ParryVictoria Falls Email: [email protected] Tel. (263)(11)213 529
www.africansojourn.com
Board of Trustees
Allan Savory, ChairIgnatius Ncube, Vice ChairChief D. Shana II
Chief A. J. Mvutu
Chief B.W. Wange
Chief D. Nelukoba
Chief S.R. Nekatambe
Councilor Ndubiwa
Mary Ncube
Lot Ndlovu
Emeldah Nkomo
(Staff Representative)Elias Ncube
(Staff Representative)Osmond Mugweni - Masvingo
Hendrik O’Neill - Harare
Sam Brown, Austin, Texas,
ex-officio
Staff
Huggins Matanga, DirectorAlan Sparrow, Director of
EducationElias Ncube, Community
Programmes ManagerEmeldah Nkomo, Community
Training CoordinatorAndrew Moyo, Village
Banking CoordinatorOtilia Mpofu,
Office ManagerSylvia Nyakujawa and
Vusa Mangena, Bookkeepers
Dimbangombe Ranch andConservation Safaris:
Roger Parry, ManagerTrish Pullen,
Assistant Manager, CateringAlbert Chauke, Ranch Foreman
Africa Centre for Holistic Management(A subsidiary of the Savory Center
since 1992)
To order products inAustralia/New Zealand or southern Africa contact:Australia: Holistic Decision Making Association, Lennie Chaplain, P.O. Box1157, Moree NSW 2400, tel: 61-2-6752-9065; [email protected] Africa: Whole Concepts cc, PO Box 1806, Vryburg 8600; tel/fax: 27-53-9274367; [email protected]