The Research Ranch: A Shangri-La for Ecologists

"Nature is a tough old bitch who can take better care of her own than most of us realize."

The speaker was an internationally recognized ecologist in the midst of a bull session with friends. “But,” he added quickly, “if you quote me I'll call you a liar."

It was not a popular thesis five years ago at the peak of the ecomania sweeping the country; nor are there many accredited ecologists today who would state the same view exactly that way.

Yet more and more informed environmentalists are quieting the note of panic which suffused the public discussion of environmental problems a few years ago. They do not disparage the dangers of further abuse of man's environment; neither do they underestimate the seriousness of the harms already done.

They simply introduce into the equation a hopeful factor of time. In their view doomsday is not now, today, nor even next week. We have time to amend our ways; we have time to study the vast, complex and intricate interrelationships that exist among all the animate and inanimate parts of the world we live in, and to profit from the findings.

This period of grace, they hold, accrues from the fact that nature is indeed tough and has shown a remarkable ability to care for her own. Comforting as that fact may be however, these same ecologists hasten to add their own warning: we don't know how tough nature is; that toughness has not been measured scientifically. Thus we have no way of knowing how long the grace period will be, and so we still have no time to waste.In this context, then, The Research Ranch, at Elgin, Arizona, is potentially able to help answer what might be a key question of current ecology: just how tough is nature? How quickly will nature reclaim an area of land and restore to it the ecosystem that existed on it before the encroachment of modern man?

The Research Ranch, Inc. is a nonprofit, private operating foundation which is attempting to turn the clock back more than a century and a half on some 8,000 acres of choice grasslands. All cattle-raising activities, all farming have been stopped. Range management practices have halted, and nature has an almost free hand to do as she will with this beautiful, milehigh shortgrass prairie, oak savannah and woodland.

Spread gracefully across the western foothills of the Huachuca Mountains, the land almost surely supported cattle and horses of the Spanish conquistadores of Mexico in the 1700's during the period of the great haciendas, although its history that far back still is obscure. Probably in the early 1800's it, like most of the land in the region, was dominated by the wild longhorn cattle that became the undisputed kings of the range, holding sway over indigenous species and even challenging the parties of pioneers pushing their ways westward toward their El Dorados.

Then, after the Gadsden Purchase brought the land into American ownership, the land was traversed increasingly by troops from nearby Fort Huachuca. It was grazed by their horses, and hay was cut for the stables at the fort. Finally it was fenced into huge pastures for cattle. Some of it was homesteaded; some became part of the Coronado National Forest; some came into the ownership of the State of Arizona.

It was good cattle range. The grasses grew high, their lush spread interrupted only minimally by occasional stands of live oak and other trees, just enough to provide shade from the summer sun but not enough to preempt appreciable acreage from the grasses. Even though the annual precipitation was less than 20 inches, the contours of the gently rolling hills was such that the drainage system created cienegas, springs and two ever-flowing streams.

At first almost imperceptibly, then at an ever accelerating rate, however, man's use of the land had its effects. The intensified grazing of his captive livestock put increasing strain on various grasses, and the cattle's competition made survival more difficult for native animals. Man himself directly challenged many of the natives. He hunted the antelope, the deer, the bear, the wolves, the foxes. Even the little black-tailed prairie dog which was a prosperous member of the natural community was hunted and trapped to extinction; the holes he dug were dangerous - a horse stepping into one could break his leg.

Cienegas (tracts of soft, wet land) also were favorite targets of man's unthinking assaults upon nature in the pioneer southwest. Probably the explanation is that he was accustomed to the soils in the east and midwest; if he drained the cienegas he would have that kind of soil, rich in humus. It took bitter experience for him to discover that, while nature may be tough, she also is unforgiving of serious disruptions of her balance.

Then, in the years after World War II, the doctrines of soil conservation and range management received their first widespread national attention. America remembered the terrible Dust Bowl experience of the years of the Great Depression immediately prior to the war. And so, on the land now comprising The Research Ranch, contour plowing was tried, along with extensive cross-fencing of pastures, in an attempt to improve upon or at least to help nature.

In 1959 Frank Appleton and his wife Ariel first saw the land. They were landowners in the Sahuarita area south of Tucson, which they loved. But the pressures of rapidly expanding mining and subdivision interests in that area were such they realized that land could not long remain the retreat they were looking for.

"As soon as we saw this land near Elgin," Frank says, "we knew it was our 'end-of-the-road' dream. Serenely beautiful, it was isolated enough so we could hope it would remain free of the pressures exerted on land nearer the burgeoning metropolitan centers. And it seemed to us then to be still remarkably close to its natural condition, with very little of the effects of man's activities evident on it."

The Appletons acquired the old Clark-Newell ranch of some 4,000 acres and began a registered Hereford operation. With their four children raised, in 1962 the Appletons interrupted their cattle-raising venture to spend two years as volunteers in the Peace Corps. Shortly after their return they acquired the Tovrea Swinging H Ranch of about 4,000 acres adjoining their earlier holdings, and for three years they concentrated on the success of their cattle operation.

But more and more, Ariel says, they became conscious of the evidences of man's encroachment upon the natural order of things on their land. There still were ridges remaining from the contour plowing. The game population was extremely low. The prairie dogs had disappeared entirely. The grasses were just managing to survive. Streams they learned had once been ever-flowing were now intermittent. Birds they knew should be there were either rare or gone entirely. Seedling trees that sprouted along the watercourses each spring were browsed by by the cattle and had disappeared before summer was over.

"Beautiful as the land still was," Ariel says, "Frank and I became consumed with wonder about what it had been like before modern man had invaded it. Note I said 'modern' man. There is little evidence that prehistoric man the native Indians made any lasting changes in the natural order here. He roamed and harvested grains and nuts and edible plants; he killed game. But he was essentially part of the natural community. He didn't kill for the sake of killing. He didn't harvest more than he could consume at the time. He didn't change watersheds or take land out of natural vegetation or decimate entire species or supplant one species with another."