Fred Provenza - BEHAVE

Excerpt from Program:
"Understanding behavioral innovation in livestock and people alike can facilitate our attempts to manage land as if fences didn't matter. While we often admire people who "think outside the box," most individuals are creatures of habit who "ponder within the box." Habits are acquired early in life and they are adaptive. Habits lead to traditions that afford creatures the home-field advantage, and that's critical, not only in sports, but in all facets of life. Habits and traditions provide stability to social groups and populations, and they would ensure survival ad infinitum if the world never changed. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, the only constant in life is change. Though we often attempt to do so, we can't cling even to a moment, and that creates the dilemma: How do creatures of habit survive in a world whose only habit is change? Several ingredients interact to facilitate or inhibit innovation, and they involve interactions among history (evolutionary, ecological, cultural), necessity (adequacy of social and biophysical environments), and chance (the unforeseen). The fact that change and innovation are essential ingredients of life leads to the realization that "sustainability" is an illusion brought about by our inability to accept the true nature of reality. Our attempts to cling to fixed forms -- ecologically, socially, economically -- ignore the fact that change is the only constant, and that from death comes life and endless transformation. In the process of exploiting existing niches, life creates new niches. All things -- including suites of plants, herbivores, and the people who manage them -- enjoy their moment in the sun only to be ushered off by the next suite of participants in the game. Ironically and critically, when people of different backgrounds and values cooperate, we greatly expand the diversity of options upon which to act, thereby increasing the likelihood of prolonging and enjoying our moment in the sun. In that sense, the courage to love one another is the courage to transcend tradition, to ceaselessly die to one's self only to be born anew, and it is the source of creativity. In the end, all frames, fences, and boundaries are arbitrary. We build them, and then, paradoxically, we find we're trapped within them."

Presentation Outline:

• Plant Responses to Herbivory
• Herbivore Responses to Plants
• Learning Influences Food and Habitat Selection
• Advances in Understanding Grazing Management
• Key Species
• Traditional Patterns of Grazing