| It's just a guess,
but Kirk Gadzia may be responsible for the improvement
of more acres of rangeland in the Southwest in modern
times than any other individual.
The possible exception is Kirk's mentor, Allan Savory,
originator of the Holistic Management (originally called
HRM) model. There is a crucial difference, however,
between the two men. Whereas the career of the pioneering
biologist from Rhodesia has been has controversial,
to put it mildly, with plenty of highs and lows, Gadzia
has worked quietly and steadily as a second-generation
educator and consultant.
In his own career, now stretching back 25 years, Kirk
has taught, consulted, or otherwise worked with ranchers
and other landowners whose global combined holdings
run into the multiple millions of acres. And if the
feedback from his clients around the Southwest is any
indication, most of those acres have become healthier
as a result of his tutelage.
"Another thing I have learned
- Kirk Gadzia, educator
and
rangeland health specialist
That's not bad for a man who has never owned a cow
or managed a ranch.
"Other than pounding a few posts, it's been mostly
talk," said Kirk with his easy smile. "In fact, I like
to think of myself as a ‘professional visitor.'"
These days his visits carry him from Canada to Mexico
to South Africa to Hawaii, the Midwest, Florida, Virginia,
and Australia. The thread connecting all his clients
is not cattle, however, but rangeland health.
"It has been a tremendous opportunity to see so many
ecosystems," he said. "And what I've learned is no matter
where you are on the planet, ecosystem functions are
the same."
It has also been an opportunity to exercise his considerable
"people skills."
"Another thing I have learned is that people
are a lot like ecosystems; they have boundaries and
thresholds too," he continued. "It's something many
people didn't understand about the Savory model –
that it wasn't about cattle, it was about ecosystem
principles and about how to manage people with the similar
kinds of principles."
Sometimes the biggest obstacle to improving a ranch's
economics or getting the range into better shape is
contentious family dynamics – which is why Kirk
does a lot of facilitation before he addresses questions
about plants and animals.
A measurement of Kirk's skills in the "people department"
is that he doesn't work with contracts.
And he's never had a check bounce.
Rangeland Health
When Kirk teaches a class he usually opens with his
favorite Wendell Berry quote: "Sustainable agriculture
is that which depletes neither soil nor people." For
Kirk, the two are inextricably kinked.
For example, consider this link as you read through
some of the definitions of land health found in Kirk's
course materials:
An Effective Water Cycle:
a permeable soil surface; evaporation losses minimized;
the effects floods and droughts are less severe; underground
water levels are stable or easily replenished; organic
content is high; plant growth rates are fast.
An Ineffective Water Cycle: soil
surface is sealed and crusted; evaporation is high;
the effects of droughts and floods are severe; water
levels are not easily replenished; organic content and
plant growth rates are low.
An Effective Mineral Cycle:
deep roots; rich organics; high diversity; few bottlenecks;
rapid cycling of nutrients.
An Ineffective Mineral Cycle:
high degree of bare ground; many bottlenecks; high erosion;
shallow roots; low biological activity.
High Successional Communities:
"Such communities are composed of populations of many
different species of plants, animals, birds, insects
and microorganisms. They are not as prone to wide fluctuations
in populations or normal weather extremes."
Low Successional Communities:
"Such communities are composed of populations of only
a few species, relative to the potential of the site.
They are usually unstable and vulnerable to fluctuations
and extremes in population shifts and weather."
In other words, people, plants, and animals are not
as far apart as we might think.
Community diversity, site stability, resilience to
perturbation, rapid recovery, normal variability, maintaining
integrity, and the ability to capture and store scarce
resources are the keys to health no matter what the
species.
This link forms the core of Kirk's success in getting
landowners around the world to improve their lives as
well as the condition of their property.
It is also one of the reasons why Kirk was asked to
join a National Research Council team in the early 1990s.
Their task was to explore the possibility of a national
assessment of rangelands using common or standardized
techniques.
One product of their work was a definition of "rangeland
health" that described an entirely new approach to conservation
and restoration. According to an updated definition
"Rangeland health is the degree to which the integrity
of the soil, vegetation, water and air as well as ecological
processes of the rangeland ecosystem are balanced and
sustained."
In other words, it's all about relationships: people
to people, people to land, ecological process to ecological
process: balanced and sustained.
It is at only this point in his class that he gets
to the cattle.
HRM
Unlike many ranch consultants, Kirk does not have a
background in agriculture.
Born in Tampa, Fla., where his father served in the
Air Force, Kirk was drawn early to the outdoors, especially
hunting. By the time he entered high school, his family
had moved to the Mojave Desert, and he spent most of
his free time hiking in the Sierra.
At Brigham Young University he majored in wildlife
biology, but minored in range science. Curious about the connections,
he went on to earn a master's degree in range science
from New Mexico State. In between his studies, he worked
for the Bureau of Land Management doing vegetative and
wildlife inventories, including field botany (he's an
expert at plant identification), which also satisfied
his desire to be in remote places.
It was only during his work on his master's degree
that he began to think about cows. His first thoughts
were not happy ones.
"I thought I didn't have a prejudice against cows when
I began my research," he said, "but when I began to
study Black grama grass I found myself automatically
assuming that the study plots contained in exclosures
would be healthier."
To his surprise, they weren't.
"I saw better establishment of Black grama grasses
in grazed areas," he said. "But the real revelation
came when I learned that the exclosures were mesquite-free
not because they were cattle-free but because they had
been sprayed by herbicide. Everything changed after
that."
"Ranching will always be around,
– Kirk Gadzia
The myth of "pristineness" vanished for Kirk, to be
replaced by thoughts of proper management. Soon, he
found himself wanting to apply his knowledge "to the
real world."
Upon graduation, he moved to Albuquerque and took a
job as a range conservationist with the Bureau of Indian
Affairs' Southern Pueblos Agency. The work was stimulating
and educational, and he enjoyed working with the tribes,
though sometimes he felt frustrated by the endless meetings.
In 1980, his life changed when he took a two-week HRM
course taught by Allan Savory and Stan Parsons. Both
men had recently relocated to Albuquerque from Rhodesia,
bringing with them a new vision of people and land –
a vision, though widely accepted today, that was considered
heretical then.
"It was an era of great excitement in range management,"
he recalled. "I was thrilled to be a part of it."
With the assistance of Savory and others, Kirk convinced
Sandia Pueblo to put a short-duration cell system on
20,000 acres of tribal land. They wrote the plan, built
the fences, and did the monitoring.
"A lot of tribal members came out when we started,"
he recalled. "And it worked well for a while. But eventually
it failed, and it failed because it was our project,
not theirs. They didn't have ownership. They chose to
not fix the fences after we left."
This taught Kirk an important lesson about the value
of eager learners.
Kirk departed the BIA to work for the Savory Center
as its Education Director. During the next seven years
he taught an HRM course once a month to 20 or more ranchers
and others. One of his students was Jim Winder, a co-founder
of The Quivira Coalition.
In 1994, after honing his teaching skills, and touching
a lot of lives, he left the Center to start his own
business. One of the lessons he took with him was to
never work with "hates" – the attitude that something
will never work, an attitude he frequently saw directed
at the Center.
"I was blessed to work with people who look at the
positive side of life and work hard to get things done,"
he said. "And I still am."
"I can't say enough about how much Allan Savory has
created a new awareness and knowledge in the field of
resource management," Kirk continued. "Much of the material
I use in my role as an educator and consultant are based
directly on his work in creating a holistic decision
making model. I consider it a great privilege to have
worked so closely with him over the years."
One of Kirk's current projects, created in collaboration
with Todd Graham,who manages the Sun Ranch in Montana,
is a new rangeland health monitoring protocol that is
simple and easy to use and is aimed at helping landowners
achieve their specific goals on the land.
Once again, the overarching goal is the health of the
land.
As for the future of ranching and all those millions
of acres that they manage, Kirk's not too worried.
"Ranching will always be around, though it may not
look like what it does today," he said. "Working with
animals is an ancient human activity and it's not going
to fade."
Not if educators like Kirk Gadzia are around
to help.
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