John Todd on Allan Savory

Environmental restoration biologist and Time Magazine "Hero of the Planet", John Todd, speaking about Allan Savory at the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award ceremony on June 6, 2012 in NYC.

Dictation given to Seth Itzkan and used with permission. Audio clip attached. Also see Challenge Award video, http://vimeo.com/44737869, from 31:00 to 31:30.

John Todd:

"He (Allan Savory) is one of the great geniuses at understanding nature's operating instructions and employing them to heal the environment, the Earth. "

"More than anybody, he's articulated that predators, grazers and plants are a co-evolving system, and separate them at your peril. Those insights were truly remarkable and very important, not only in the brittle environments he talks about, but also throughout the world."

"The other thing he did clarify in my mind was the razor's edge between a brittle environment and a non-brittle environment, where the scarce resource is water. That's triggered me to be more and more interested in nature's strategies in the water restricted parts of the world."

"I just love the fact that he had the courage to work with big animals and understand that they're just as important as the plants that coat this beautiful earth."

"I've been with wealthy land owners who were proud as hell that they'd driven the cattle off the land and were saying that they we're restoring it, and everywhere I looked, all I could see was a land that was dying faster than you could kick it in the butt with Roundup. How do you explain that? They have no deep feeling for the fact that all life co-evolved. If you don't get that one, you don't stand much of a chance, do you?"

- John Todd, June 6, 2012