Ariel Bryce Appleton

Ariel Bryce Appleton, 85, died Saturday, February 21, at her home in Santa Barbara, California. She had suffered for several years from Alzheimer's disease and, more recently, cancer. For most of her life, she was fiercely and passionately devoted to the preservation of the natural environment. The 8,000-acre Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch in southeastern Arizona, currently administered by the National Audubon Society, owes its existence to Mrs. Appleton and her former late husband, Francis Henry Appleton III, whose generous bequest and creative foresight were responsible for its establishment in 1969. Stuart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior, wrote to her, "I have known dedicated conservationists in my time who had dreams, but frankly few of them ever live to see big dreams come true. You are one of that select group, and I want you to know how much I admire what you have done with The Research Ranch - and now what has been done for the whole Country." Born in 1918, Mrs. Appleton was the first child of Peter Cooper Bryce and Angelica Schuyler Brown Bryce. She grew up in Santa Barbara, where her parents built one of the first estates on Hope Ranch in 1925 and where they lived until Mrs. Bryce's death in 1980. In 1941, she married Mr. Appleton, and in 1946 moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco, where Mr. Appleton had served in the Navy as a pilot during World War II. While raising four children she was instrumental in establishing a cooperative nursery school in Santa Monica, which became the model for other schools in the Los Angeles area. She was an early supporter of UCLA's Corinne Seeds Elementary School which her children attended. In 1956, she and her family moved to Arizona, where they purchased and ran a cattle ranch and cotton farm near Sahuarita, south of Tucson. There she and her husband were active in politics, and she served as president of Tucson's first Planned Parenthood clinic. In 1959, in response to development pressures in the Tucson area, they moved to the first of two remote registered Hereford cattle ranches they purchased near Elgin, Arizona. From 1962-64, she served with her husband in the Peace Corps program in Costa Rica. Within a few years following their return to the ranch, they decided to discontinue cattle grazing and in 1969 established the ranch as a nonprofit foundation, The Research Ranch, dedicated to the study of southwestern grassland ecosystems, conservation and education. Originally the only environmental sanctuary of its kind in Arizona, The Research Ranch, assisted by a grant from the Whittell Trust in 1980, has become a nationally recognized center for environmental research, involving several universities, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and numerous other organizations. Among her many accomplishments, Mrs. Appleton also served on the boards of The World Wildlife Foundation and The National Parks and Recreation Department, and in her later years single handedly developed the only successful captive breeding program for the Bolson tortoise, a near-extinct species once native to the desert regions of northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S. She is survived by her four children, Bryce, Marc, Lynnie and Lili, and six grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that contributions may be made in Mrs. Appleton's memory to The Research Ranch Foundation, P.O. Box 301, Sonoita, AZ 85637. A memorial service is being planned for later this year.