Allan Savory

Clifford Allan Redin Savory (born 15 September 1935) is a Zimbabwean livestock farmer and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute.

He originated holistic management, a systems thinking approach to managing resources.

Savory advocates using bunched and moving livestock in an effort to mimic nature, as a means to heal the environment, stating "only livestock can reverse desertification. There is no other known tool available to humans with which to address desertification that is contributing not only to climate change but also to much of the poverty, emigration, violence, etc. in the seriously affected regions of the world."

"Only livestock can save us."

He believes grasslands hold the potential to sequester enough atmospheric carbon dioxide to reverse climate change.

Praised by cattle farmers, his controversial ideas have sparked opposition from academics; ranging from debate on evidence for treatment effects to the scope of the potential impact for carbon sequestration.

in Biology and Botany in 1955.

Savory’s early career was multifaceted, working as a biologist, soldier, public servant, member of parliament, president of a political party, farmer, rancher, and as a consultant.

The insights from these experiences eventually culminated in what is now known as Holistic Management.

His work studying the root cause of land degradation (desertification) began as early as 1955 in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), where he served in the Colonial Service as Provincial Game Officer for Northern and Luapula Provinces.

His work continued in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), first as a research officer in the Game Department and then as an independent scientist and international consultant.

Savory’s early research advocated for the culling of large numbers of elephants based on the belief that large numbers of grazing herbivores were destroying their own habitat, a mainstream belief that persists with many anti-livestock proponents to this day.

In the early 1960s, when Savory was a Territorial (reserve) Army officer, he wrote to Federal Prime Minister Roy Welensky recommending the military prepare for impending guerrilla warfare by training trackers - a recommendation which was rejected by conservative senior officers.

However, in the early 1960s, his ideas began to gain acceptance when the Federal Army's elite all-white Special Air Service (SAS) invited him to present courses on tracking and "aggressive bush craft" - which were deployed against African nationalist insurgent groups fighting against the colonial government.

At the time of Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, Savory was a Captain in the part-time Territorial Army unit, the 4th Battalion Royal Rhodesia Regiment.

He opposed UDI quietly.

In 1965, Savory presented a paper to Rhodesian Army Headquarters suggesting the formation of a Guerrilla Anti-terrorist Unit (GATU) with white SAS operators and black police who would specialize in tracking, and pose as African nationalist insurgents to infiltrate and eliminate their groups - this request was approved, but disagreement between army and police led to the unit's termination.

Before GATU was disbanded, Savory recalls that on operations "we whites were blackened with special dye produced for us".

Subsequently, the army allowed Savory to select members of the entirely white Territorial Army, who were also rangers from the Rhodesian Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management (DNPWLM), and civilian professional hunters to form the Tracker Combat Unit (TCU) - as the unit had no black personnel, plans to infiltrate groups were abandoned, and re-focused on tracking and killing African nationalist insurgents.

After Savory’s departure from the TCU, it later evolved to become the Selous Scouts.

His recommendations were not enacted during his time in the Game Department, but later in 1969 as a Member of Parliament he brought about a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry led by George Petrides charged “to investigate and report on all aspects of wild life policy and management in Rhodesia and to make recommendations thereon." Following the recommendations of the Petrides Commission, Dr. Graham Child was appointed Director of National Parks and Wild Life Management who then implemented an elephant culling program. In a 2004 article discussing the program, Dr. Child noted that “while I was Director 30,529 [elephants] were killed, mostly on culls, and the countrywide population grew from an estimated 44,109 to 52,583 animals.”

However, this culling program did not reverse the degradation of the land as expected, and Savory has called his decision to advocate for the culling of large numbers of elephants "the saddest and greatest blunder of my life."

This preventable loss of life, the result of interpreting research data to fit the prevailing world-view that too many animals causes overgrazing and overbrowsing, led to Savory becoming even more determined to understand and resolve the root cause of land degradation and to prevent others from making the same short-sighted mistakes which he attributed to applying reductionist thinking to complex living systems.

This eventually led to Savory's development of a holistic framework for decision-making and to the creation of Holistic Planned Grazing, as detailed in his books, Holistic Management, Third Edition: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment, written with his wife Jody Butterfield, and Holistic Management Handbook, Third Edition: Regenerating Your Land and Growing Your Profits, written with Sam Bingham and Jody Butterfield.

Savory was influenced by earlier work of French agronomist André Voisin who said that overgrazing resulted from the amount of time plants were exposed to animals, not from too many animals in any given area.

Savory saw this as a solution to overgrazing, and believed that overgrazing was caused by leaving cattle too long and returning them too soon, rather than the size of the herd.

Savory says in his memoir that he enlisted as a ranger with the British Colonial Service in the Northern Rhodesian Game Department to prepare himself for guerilla warfare - learning techniques like bush skills and tracking of animals like elephants from local traditions, which could then have military applications in counter-insurgency.

Savory was elected to the Rhodesian Parliament representing Matobo constituency in the 1970 election.

After resigning from the Rhodesian Front in protest over its policies and handling of the war, in 1973 Savory reformed the defunct Rhodesia Party formerly led by Sir Roy Welensky.

Savory stated in March 1973 that the primary aim of the Rhodesia Party under his presidency was "to ensure the long-term future of the European in Rhodesia through strong and just government" and as part of this white economic superiority must be maintained, but the extreme differences between white and black wages should be lessened so that "good government" would reduce calls for "self-government".

The party also stated that it did not want African members, and in March 1973 stated that it "will not be a party to a coalition with African members of Parliament".

In May 1973, Savory stated that the Rhodesia Party supported racial segregation including of schools and hospitals, recommending that only Africans who have to work in towns such as domestic servants should be housed in urban areas - and suggested the introduction of a "Minister for Population Control" who would handle the "population explosion" among Africans.

In June 1973, Savory publicly stated, "If I had been born a black Rhodesian, instead of a white Rhodesian, I would be your greatest terrorist."

Although he urged white Rhodesians to understand why he would feel this, the reaction to this statement led to Savory's ousting from the Rhodesia Party.

Savory received the 2003 Banksia International Award and won the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

Prince Charles called him "a remarkable man" and noted farmer Joel Salatin wrote, "History will vindicate Allan Savory as one of the greatest ecologists of all time."

In contrast, James E. McWilliams described Savory as having "adherence to scientifically questionable conclusions in the face of evidence to the contrary".

George Monbiot said of him, "his statements are not supported by empirical evidence and experimental work, and that in crucial respects his techniques do more harm than good."

However, this comment has been subject to criticism in a later article published in The Guardian by Hunter Lovins, titled "Why George Monbiot is wrong: grazing livestock can save the world".

Savory was educated in South Africa at what was then the University of Natal, gaining a B.Sc.