Circle Ranch

Commercial Farm Projects, Courses/Workshops, Land, Livestock, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation, Water Harvesting —

by Owen Hablutzel May 3, 2013

Though too often vilified, both ‘cows’ and ‘plows’ have proven to be among our most effective and available tools for restoring healthy ecological and eco-agricultural systems in our landscapes. Bucking the trend in conservation that has denounced these tools from early on was Aldo Leopold – perhaps best known for his influential Land Ethic from 1948. In his earlier, groundbreaking book about working with ecosystems and wildlife, Game Management (1933), his preface made the visionary but provocative claim that “Game can be restored by the creative use of the same tools which have heretofore destroyed it — ax, plow, cow, fire, and gun.”

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Allan Savory at Circle Ranch, June 2009

 
Almost every American wildlife agency, conservation organization, university, wildlife and range scientist is pledged to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.  The Model lists its Core Principal #6 as:

Circle Ranch is in the high-mountain deserts of far-West Texas, where we get about 11 inches of rainfall annually. Generally, our lower country like this desert is very dry, but the ranch has big draws that run throughout it which   create unique ecosystems in a very dry area.  Much of the grass that is growing in this draw, photographed with a telephoto lens from a high mountain vantage point, is the giant sacaton grass.  Sacaton is considered an inferior pasture grass based on the theory that cattle don’t like it.

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It is springtime at Circle… (more…)

It is well-accepted that the earliest human habitation in North America dates to about 12,000-years ago.  What if that date is wrong by at least 23,000-years?! (more…)