...For Here is Peace

RESEARCH RANCH from page 15

In 1969 the Appletons decided to do what they could to answer their own questions. They removed the cattle from the range and established The Research Ranch, Inc. for the purposes of research, conservation and education. They arranged to convey to the foundation all of their land except for relatively small acreages for their own home and for their children's future use. This land, they felt, was a nearly ideal place to find out how fast and by what means nature would restore her own order. Close, scientific observation of the processes would add immensely to the store of ecological knowledge.

"This land has not been totally ravaged like that of the great, sprawling megalopolises. There still are the basic elements of the original ecosystem. By learning how nature retakes it, perhaps we can help man avoid future destruction of the natural order of his world. More important, perhaps we can help him learn how to redress the abuses which have threatened the productivity of his environment," the Appletons say.

They hasten to make clear that The Research Ranch has no delusions of being the final source of answers to all the world's environmental problems. At best it can contribute only a meaningful part of the vast mosaic of knowledge man must assemble about the world in which he lives. Whatever specifics the foundation produces will apply necessarily to the type of ecosystem that exists, or did exist, there.

But already The Research Ranch has been welcomed enthusiastically by serious investigators in fields which might seem far removed from the arena of southern Arizona's shortgrass prairie and oak savannah. One of the first was the Atomic Energy Commission, which used it as an area of undisturbed grassland in developing high-altitude photography techniques.

Very shortly after the foundation was established the validity of its purposes and the originality of its approach were signalized by the acceptance of eminent individuals and organizations to serve on the board of trustees. Institutional members of the board are the Fauna Preservation Society, England; the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums; Colorado State University; the United States Forest Service; and the Wild Animal Propagation Trust.

Individual members are Mrs. Gifford Pinchot; Stewart L. Udall, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior; Dr. Charles D. Bonham of C.S.U.; Raymond F. Dasmann, senior ecologist of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Switzerland; John Perry, assistant director, the National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C.; Lee Talbot, senior ecologist, the Smithsonian Institution; William H. Woodin, former director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson; and Charles W. Hubbard III. Mrs. Appleton is president, succeeding Mr. Appleton who is currently secretary, and Virgil Bruce Cobb, of Tucson, is treasurer. Among the projects that have been formerly undertaken is one by the Department of Range Management, College of Agriculture, University of Arizona. Under the direction of Dr. Phillip Ogden, this consists of a continuing study of the effects of rainfall. Colorado State University has undertaken a cooperative program of setting up a data bank and computer retrieval system; Ogden's students have started a herbarium in which are gathered and catalogued dried plant specimens from the property.

A grassland finch study, funded by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the competition between those birds and other animals for the available food supply. It appears rodents are the finch's chief rivals for seeds and grains.

One of the most immediate spontaneous uses of The Research Ranch and one of the most rapidly accelerating is as an open laboratory for field studies by classroom groups of students. Scarcely had the foundation been established when word-of-mouth news traveled around the country, probably by way of the trustees and the organizations they represented. (The Appletons were so busy with the myriad of details involved in getting the organization put together that they had no time to seek publicity.) Inquiries were received from colleges and universities from as far away as Vermont and Oregon requesting permission to visit and study. The ranch obliged by making available dormitory quarters in an old ranch house on the premises. Students and teachers came, brought their own food and bedding, and, after a brief indoctrination by the Appletons or a resident graduate assistant, followed their own interests around the property.

Such a group was one from Antioch College, of Ohio, that came for a several-day visit this spring. They were very serious and open-minded students, ranging from freshmen to the graduate level. They spent their first morning hiking up to the source of O'Donnell Creek, then back to a gracious picnic area to meet Mrs. Appleton and a visiting reporter for lunch.

The setting, somebody suggested, was reminiscent of Robin Hood's home in Sherwood Forest; you almost expected to see Little John and Friar Tuck and the rest of the merry men lounging on the limbs of the big oaks and munching hunks of venison.

Soon, however, the conversation turned to more serious matters. These students were preparing for a variety of careers medicine, law, business, public affairs and so on. But they agreed they had one common goal, to be constructive, effective citizens of the world; they shared one concern, for the environment. They were determined to avoid one mistake they saw too many other self-styled environmentalists making: perceiving an isolated problem, pouncing on it and rushing headlong to the most obvious answer.

Instead, they agreed, it is necessary to view each isolated problem as though it is intimately related to a global whole, as indeed they believed each is. The question was raised (as it has been by cattlemen in Arizona) whether in their estimation removal of such choice range as The Research Ranch from grazing purposes was justified in the light of the then approach-ing meat shortage. Their chorused reply was to question whether or not meat is the most efficient means of supplying protein in the human diet. They cited studies that claim certain grains are both more efficient and more economical.

One of their number summed up what seemed to be their consensus: most of us will live well beyond the year 2000 A.D. We have to think ahead on a global basis, because the world is getting smaller and more crowded every day. Thus we are constrained to see reality, not just what we would like to see. That is why we are excited about this project at The Research Ranch. We hope that there will be many more such established around the world.

Already their hopes in that regard seem on the way toward fulfillment. The foundation had received in the past few months a number of inquiries from other owners of large acreages in different parts of the country. They had heard of The Research Ranch, and would appreciate the benefit of the Appletons' experience in setting up such an organization.

The foundation has, of course, been pleased to comply with those requests, reciting, for example, the particulars of the problems accruing from the fact that the ranch is composed of approximately 3,400 acres of patented land, 2,250 acres of Forest Service land and some 2,350 acres of state land. So far as the Appletons know, this was the first time the Forest Service ever had had a request from a leaseholder to eliminate grazing completely from choice rangeland. Usually the battle is the other way, for increased grazing privileges.

The Forest Service, after it recovered from its initial shock, wrote a brand new, precedent-setting agreement, allocating the land for research purposes and excluding grazing. The State Land Department, also, found itself in uncharted waters but has similarly recognized the potential value of the accomplishments of The Research Ranch and has arranged for the foundation's tenure of the land even while assuring the people of Arizona at least the income from the land realized when it was used for grazing. That the value will far exceed anything the land has ever produced in the past seems evident already. The changes noticeable since cattle were removed are many. There has been a great increase in trees cottonwod, willow, ash and others along both the wet and dry watercourses. Across the range many varieties of cactus have made noticeable gains, especially the agavi, rainbow and staghorn cholla.

There has been a tremendous increase in the bird population, both in species and in numbers within a species. Those of which specific studies have been made include the harlequin (Mearns) quail, sixteen varieties of finches, the horned lark, and the broad class of raptors, including several hawks, falcons, eagles and owls.

Rodents, including mice, rabbits (both cottontails and jacks), rats and ground squirrels have increased greatly as the grains and other foods have increased with the lack of grazing. Not measured but obvious has been a gain in the populations of deer, foxes, skunks and other animals.

Two still are noticeable by their absence, the antelope and the black-tailed prairie dog. It is hoped the antelope will return on its own, for there still are some in the general region. But the prairie dog is gone completely, and the foundation anticipates that eventually it will be necessary to transplant a colony. One attempt to do so failed through a series of misadventures. Another will be made when necessary precautions can be taken against another failure.

One recent step forward is the appointment of a qualified, fulltime director. The foundation recognized that the proliferation of the uses of the ranch posed problems of keeping the work in focus, avoiding duplication, effectively supplementing work being done elsewhere, and perceiving and following through meaningful research that could best been done here.

After two years search, this summer Jay H. Snell was appointed director. A graduate of Earlham College, Indiana, with a B.A. in biology, he earned his M.A. in zoology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied under Alden Miller. He got his Ph.D. in zoology and ecology from the University of Georgia, where he worked under Eugene P. Odum on National Science Foundation studies.

Dr. Snell's subsequent work includes a post-doctoral fellowship with the University of Minnesota, studies in Peru for Wild Kingdom, studies at the Tall Timbers Research Station at Tallahassee, Fla., manning a research station in the Bahamas for his ala mater, Earlham, and serving as an assistant professor at the University of Alaska.

As president of the foundation, Mrs. Appleton says she feels that Dr. Snell's experienced and professional direction will enhance the work of The Research Ranch tremendously. As co-founders of the enterprise, she says she and Frank are delighted and relieved to have brought the foundation to the point at which it can make increasingly meaningful contributions to man's struggle to preserve and enhance his environment.

For a while, she admits, they were almost discouraged. Too many skeptics responded to their efforts by asking what kind of tax dodge it was. Too often the foundation was looked upon as the plaything of a couple of the idle rich. Too frequently she and Frank, neither one a trained scientist, were at a loss to decide what would be the most constructive use of the foundation and its assets. Now that it is in the competent hands of the trustees and director, those burdens are off the backs of the Appletons.

Ever since Adam succumbed to Eve, man has been trying to find his lost Eden. The Greeks had their Utopia, the Norsemen their Valhalla. And, since James Hilton wrote "Lost Horizon" forty years ago, Americans have been seeking their Shangri-La. Perhaps, as some of the astronauts have suggested, the earth is the garden spot of the solar system.

"Perhaps," an eminent space scientist, Dr. Krafft Ehricke, once told a Phoenix audience, "our lost Eden, our Shangri-La, has been right here, all around us, all the time."

Ariel and Frank Appleton are inclined to agree, and they have put up their time, substance and talent in the effort to help mankind learn how to keep it this time.

April 8, 1973 The following diary excerpt was written by my husband on August 9, 1962, as he sat high on a hill overlooking Shiprock, New Mexico. Dr. Meisel (now the Medical Director of the Memorial Rehabilitation Hospital in Santa Barbara) was then saying goodbye to his two years as a physician on the Navajo Reservation with USPH Hospital in Shiprock. My husband loved the land and its people and he learned and spoke the Navajo language to bring him in closer contact with all that he loved. Many are his sketches and paintings (he was an artist before going into medicine) and verse surrounding his Navajo experience with his goodbye to it all reading: "The tumbleweed is still green but is almost ready to roll as the desert purifies it with heat. A rumbling thunder rolls an ominous warning. Dark clouds cover part of the bluewhite western sky. Whispy curtains of rain fall gray on the mountain in the distance. As I sit on a high point overlooking the green valley of Shiprock and a desert twister whispers swiftly by (tossing weeds up into its spiral-like lives in time spiral), I know that the time to leave has come... and it is not without the pain which accompanies all beauty. For here is peace. The quiet softness of this hard country is paradox in itself. The timelessness of mountains and mesas in the beauty of thundering silence sits cleanly and lightly as a thistle-whisp of cloud on a pinnacle. Gently moving clouds drop their soft violet images on unmoving terrain while echoes of unmovable peace of a million years ride the gentle wind.

The thunderstorm glides across the desert plain; another generation of storms unchanged since time's beginning. It falls in a way unchanged on sand and rock that drink it as it was with the first great rain.

The valley below is green. Someday the desert will be green and I will be back.

The tumbleweed is coming to maturity and will soon roll as the winds of fortune heighten.

It is time to go from this beautiful land and I am sad... but grateful for the pain. It all means that I have received and only thus can know the loss.

In this great country, forever is a short short time and a second is eternity. Thank you God for eyes that see."

Harris Meisel, M.D.

We miss the Southwest and Arizona Highways is, to us, like "coming home again!"

Sincerely, Fredda B. Meisel Santa Barbara, California