Sam Bingham grew up in the extremely non-brittle Appalachian high country of western North Carolina but had to come to grips with extreme desertification in the 1970s when, as a young freelance journalist, he signed on to help Navajo teachers produce a school textbook from what they could read in their own land--the 27,000 square mile home of the Navajo Nation out where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico join their four corners. "Allan Savory, fresh out of Africa, made us see our work in a world-spanning context," as Sam tells it. Sam's subsequent association Allan's work, as journalist, ghost writer, consultant, and accredited professional, now spans nearly half a century and a good part of our desertifying world--the Australian Outback, the Asian Steppes, and the African Sahel, as well as the American Southwest and some of Latin America. He lives now on a small farm near his roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where four feet of rain fall in a year and calves may go missing in kudzu.
Allan Savory is cofounder and president of the Savory Institute. Born in Zimbabwe and educated as an ecologist with degrees in zoology and botany, Savory has had a decades-long career in African and Middle Eastern government and politics, private consultancy, and teaching. His work in resource management started in the mid-1960s in an effort to find workable solutions ordinary people could implement to restore degraded lands. He and his wife, Jody Butterfield continue those efforts today, reaching a global audience through the efforts of the Savory Institute.
