@MOTS411 Burning is a holistic management of land in addition to what you mentioned. Mother Nature sets fire to pastures all the time and the come back beautifully!
It is true that Holistic management does include fire in extremely rare cases. This land in particular didn't need a burn, it needed more cattle managed properly.
Does anyone commenting actually own a pasture with a heavy load of noxious weeds??? We just bought a small pasture full of thistle, Sericea Lespedeza sunflower and several other ‘weeds’. We don’t yet have the fences repaired for grazing, and don’t have a way to protect goats and sheep yet. (In two years we will be we want to get a start on reducing the seed spreading weeds). We don’t want to resort to weed killer currently. There are some good native grasses but seem to have been over grazed. We’re going to try a late summer burn just to get a start on the heavy weed load.
Spending money on fertilizer, micro-nutrients, pesticides, herbicides is expensive. Burning seems effective and cheaper..but, a lot more smoke is produced by summer burning... Allan Savory promotes holistic management with large concentration of grazing animals. At the least it seems it should be tried before any of the above conventional methods.
Honestly though I think a purely holistic management of the land would not require burning. The land would work itself through composting that old material and the manure from the livestock and their mixing and mulching with their feet and rotating pasture would create an environment that you wouldn't have weeds or poor growth etc.
