Review by Allen Best
San Luis Valley ranching – April 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Last Ranch: A Colorado Community and the Coming Desert
by Sam Bingham
Published in 1996 by Pantheon Books
ISBN: 0-679-42283-8
Occasionally an idea comes along that tilts heads sideways, causing people to view the world from a different perspective. Such may yet be the case with Allan Savory and his holistic resource management. In newspapers from Vail to Paonia, and in workshops from Gypsum to Ouray, his ideas about livestock grazing have been expounded in recent years. But the best explanation I’ve seen comes in these stories from Saguache County.
A wildlife ranger in Rhodesia, and then a counterinsurgent in the civil war there, Savory began wondering why land tamed for livestock production felt sick. Eventually, he came up with some assumptions about livestock grazing that violate the conventional wisdom of both environmentalists and ranchers, be they in Africa or Colorado.
Savory said overgrazing was a function of time, not numbers. He said brittle environments characterized by erratic or seasonal rainfall and dry air required grazing animals to complete the decay part of the life cycle. And he concluded that trampling and stampeding of animals were actually good for the land.
A teacher for 13 years on the Navaho Reservation in Arizona, Sam Bingham had been unable to explain to the Navaho why the conventional wisdom about range management failed to restore the land’s one-time vigor. Learning of Savory’s theories, he became a disciple.
Anticipating an audience of largely white Americans, he chose the San Luis Valley to present his polemic about desertification and alternative ways of looking at the environment. To do so, he spent a year with a family near Saguache (the Whittens) who had been persuaded by Savory’s methods and sought to apply them to the world around them. Along the way we get sideways glances at the much better publicized desertification of Africa. Different continents, but the stories are essentially the same, argues Bingham.
The third paragraph of the book gives a strong indication of what is to come: “An axiom of biology holds that changes in the health of an organism show up first at the margins, and this spot in the San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado is a margin. Why should someone living there, then, not suspect that maybe he, not the denizens of great cities and well-watered heartlands, lives on the cutting edge of the future, and why should he not take this responsibility seriously?”
The Last Ranch is serious, but not solemn. The writing is lively, not ponderous. It is journalism — and I do not use that word pejoratively — of the highest order.
We encounter a cast of characters that should make anybody who has ever driven the Gun Barrel curious to stop and grab a beer at Packer’s Place in Saguache. There’s Louisiana-born Peggy Godfrey, “cowboy poet and midwife of large animals,” pulling struggling calves from cow wombs with the aid of baling string.
We find BLM range conservationist Royce Wheeler trying to introduce new ideas into the Tracy Common Grazing Association, finding that the human ecology may be more tricky than figuring out plant ecology.
There’s Maurice Strong trying to sell water from the aquifers underneath the San Luis Valley for urban development while presiding, in Rio de Janeiro, at the world’s first international conference about the environment.
We have political drama — Dick Lamm tripping over his AWDI toes in his bid to become a senator. And we have judicial maneuvering — Indian-born mathematician Devraj Sharma methodically shredding the hydrological assumptions of the AWDI plan.
We also encounter leafy spurge, a plant that has range conservationists across the West speaking with awe and fear. Moreover, we go to the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge, where a new manager seeks to view ducks from a broader perspective, only to be slammed by a powerful environmental organization.
So often, we think that the only way to get from Point A to Point B is in a straight line, failing to realize that ecosystems are far more complex, and may well involve going to Point C and Point D.
Readers could approach Bingham’s book from four or five perspectives and be satisfied. There’s local color, and some fine if selective local history, as per the attempted AWDI water raid. Grazing theories, and not just those of Savory, are explained.
Desertification is explored, as is the ecology of a human community. And finally, anybody who just plain enjoys accomplished writing will be rewarded.
In these 348 pages, I could only find one quarrel: farther was mistakenly used when further was appropriate. I would also have enjoyed examination of Savory’s theories from a less ardent disciple and from a broader perspective, but that’s another book.
More critical minds may find more to quibble about, but I am confident they would conclude, as did I, that this will rank among the best books they encounter this year, and not just because it’s set in a locale close at hand.
— Allen Best