Belinda Low Mackey
On a quest to save Grevy’s zebra in East Africa, Belinda Low Mackey, used training she received in HMI’s Certified Educator program to help structure and strategize the efforts of the Grevy’s Zebra Trust, where Belinda serves as Executive Director. The result was the restoration of millions of acres of savannah and the secured livelihoods of a hundred thousand pastoralists.
Women in Holistic Management® community group training.
Grevy’s Zebra Trust (GZT) works to protect the endangered species and its fragile habitat while working with the community as a whole. GZT began collaborating with the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), which had been supporting Kenyan pastoral communities to establish core wildlife conservation areas that excluded livestock and included safari concessions. The diversification required more resilient and productive land. GZT determined that holistic planned grazing was sorely needed in order to restore the habitat of the wildlife and convinced several other conservation organizations, including NRT, to support the practice on a trial basis. Holistic planned grazing was appealing because it served the pastoral community and could potentially increase biodiversity and rangeland productivity with relatively low input.
Samburu morans (warriors) demonstrating to the workshop group the interconnections of biodiverstity (community dynamics).
Workshops for community groups and trainers began in over a dozen community-based wildlife conservancies, representing 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) and over 133,000 people. Drawing past and present maps, the participants engaged in charting the demise of the area’s ecosystem and then identified needs and strategies to achieve the holistic goal. The topic of planned grazing and its benefits empowered many in the groups. Commonly, participants would say, “We can do this, our ancestors did this and it was good, we can do it again”.
However, some were reluctant to community-wide planned grazing due to past experiences in the region. Fears of outsiders coming in and taking their land and individuals being left out of the process rose to the surface. Resistance to change is human nature, but Belinda knew changes were needed in order to restore Grevys’ zebra, and those changes would require trust and cooperation among community members.
The first pilot demonstration site was established in the West Gate Community Conservancy, setting aside 1000 hectares (2500 acres) of “buffer zone” located between the strictly wildlife area and the open communal grazing land. Families loaned their cattle, which were bunched together to graze the buffer zone for a specific time and tended by hired herders. Animal health and land condition were monitored so that any needed adjustments could be made. Over time, the technique proved to be a success! West Gate even hosted groups from other conservation agencies to show how holistic planned grazing benefits the community, land and animals, even when done on a small scale.
Using the Elders’ canes and plastic toy animals, recovery time for plants is demonstrated.
While the land was visibly improved, what impressed the West Gate community most was the condition of the animals that came off the planned grazing sites. They were noticeably fatter and healthier than local cattle that weren’t part of the program. NRT even purchased some of the cattle, offering income for education, supplemental food and other necessities for community members. The community was moving toward their holistic goal.
Several other conservation areas followed suit and continue holistic land management practices and training. The workshops are in remote locations and include a diversity of people: young, old, schooled, non-schooled, men, women. Belinda makes sure that there is diversity so knowledge from the training has the power to affect all. Her goal for the training programs is to establish enough knowledge and information within a community so they can get behind holistically planned grazing and put it into action and sustain it for generations to come.
In the process, she has captured the heart and respect of the people in the region. She continues her journey, side-by-side with local communities, to save Grevys’ zebra from extinction and improve the ecosystem that all need in order to thrive.
To read the full In Practice article by Craig Leggitt, click here (pages 3-5).
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Adelene is a resident of Arkansas and loves exploring the state’s natural trails. Her passion for education and technology led her to earn a master’s in learning systems technology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. With her professional experience managing student/client databases and instructional design, Adelene will bring skill and understanding to her role as Office Manager & Instructional Designer at HMI. Her focus on making education more accessible to diverse communities is evident through her volunteer work as an board member for a scholarship program. Adelene is devoted to creating educational opportunities that align with HMI’s mission to promote healthy, resilient lands and thriving communities.
Seth Wilner has been a Holistic Management International Certified Educator since 2005. For 22 years he has worked as an agent educator with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension where he specializes in farm business management with an emphasis on whole farm planning.
Dana was first introduced to Holistic Management in the 1990s while working in the Texas Hill Country. She strongly believes that Holistic Management can positively impact families that are on the land, the communities they are a part of, and larger landscape resource regeneration efforts.
Sarah Robertson grew up in Taos, New Mexico and has always been passionate about land stewardship, growing things, and nurturing others. After completing a BA in Communication from the University of New Mexico and working with local non-profits, she started her journey as a first-generation farmer. Since 2015, she has been learning and growing alongside her husband on various leased properties in Albuquerque, NM and running a small market farm with goats, chickens, and a CSA. In her role as Programs Assistant at HMI, Sarah brings her enthusiasm for regenerative agriculture, devotion to supporting others, and drive for lifelong learning and growing.
Jozua Lambrecht is from South Africa and divides his time between their home in Somerset West and their family farm in Sutherland, one of the coldest places in South Africa, where they farm with sheep. He is married to his wife Therese and they have two daughters.
Alejandro Carrillo is a fourth-generation rancher, and he is quite familiar with the challenges of running a profitable cattle ranch in the Chihuahuan desert. Because annual precipitation seldom exceeds nine inches, every drop counts when it comes to growing more grasses. Grazing year-round with only sea salt as an input, he is not willing to waste any water in such a brittle environment.
Jared L Talley was born and raised in Southwestern Idaho and now seeks to help rural communities adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Service at Boise State University, earning his PhD in Philosophy from Michigan State University and his MPA in Environmental Policy and Natural Resource Management from Boise State University. An environmental philosopher by training and an interdisciplinary scholar in practice, he seeks to better understand how communities relate to the land and how this relationship poses obstacles and opportunities for collaboration and governance. In doing so, he studies the role of science in collaborative policy, the role of place in environmental identity, and the role of the imagination in mediating both. Specifically, he studies grazing management and public land permitting, community-led conservation programs, rural education and entrepreneurship, place-based environmental governance, and the imaginative experience of our natural and built environments — all in the contexts of the intermountain American West.
