After more than a decade at the helm of the National Audubon Society’s Appleton-Whittel Research Ranch, Dr. Linda Kennedy has, with somewhat mixed feelings, turned over the lead responsibility for the ranch to a new director effective January 23, 2018.
Dr. Kennedy first came to the 8,000-acre ranch as an Arizona State University Ph.D. botany student in 1995 to research why native sacaton grass was not faring well in the Southwest. She fell in love with the facility and before the end of the decade was named the ranch’s assistant director, a post she held until she was selected in 2006 to be the ranch’s fifth director, succeeding Dr. Bill Branan.
Dr. Kennedy looks forward to spending more time with her husband, range conservationist Dan Robinett, gardening and volunteering at the ranch doing some of the botany-related work she didn’t have time for as director. Asked to cite the thing she’s most proud of accomplishing at AWRR, she responds without hesitation: the creation of the Apacheria Fellowship Program, which solicits donations to help undergraduate and graduate student scientists further their research goals. Most of all, she says, “I will miss being part of such a unique operation.”
The research ranch reins are now in the hands of Cristina Francois, a youthful yet very experienced and energetic professional who is completing a doctorate in entomology from the University of Arizona. Specializing in the study of moths, Ms. Francois brings a rich background of teaching, research and community outreach to her new position. Having officially started her new job on January 23, she introduced herself to the community at the AWRR monthly potluck on February 10. Obviously thrilled to have landed her new position, Ms. Francois said she has been attracted to Southeast Arizona ever since she came to study moths on Mt. Lemmon as a Cal State-Fullerton graduate student. To balance her professional work, she admits to having a “somewhat out of control “collection of cacti and succulents, having a weakness for kittens (she serves as a foster parent for them) and to being a craft-o-holic. She loves to cross-stitch bugs (scientifically accurate, of course) and crochet plushy-cacti. Ms. Francois lives on the ranch with her foster kittens, her Desert Tortoise Tater Tot, her “sweet chickens,” and, of course, her husband, wildlife biologist John Kraft.
As the new director Ms. Francois hopes to build on the work of Dr. Kennedy to increase involvement of the wider community in the ranch’s activities. If her lively presentation at the potluck are any indication, her casual, friendly manner and sense of humor will ensure her success in that regard.
The Research Ranch encompasses both privately owned and leased government land and is the brainchild of Frank and Ariel Appleton who, while managing the cattle-raising operation on the ranch in the 1960s, wondered what the land was like before cattle were introduced. To find out, they convinced the state and federal agencies involved to set aside the entire ranch as a research facility that would remove grazing entirely and thus serve as a reference area that would enable researchers to compare grazed land with land left in its natural state. Since its founding in 1968, the ranch has served as a first-class base camp for hundreds of researchers, many of whom live on the premises for varying lengths of time while they conduct their research.