Defenders Magazine

Growing in the Right Direction

In Arizona and elsewhere, communities are finding ways to balance the needs of nature and people.

By Tim Vanderpool

© Jack Dykinga

Carolyn Campbell gazes at a blooming lavender carpet of ironwood trees stretching toward the Tortolita Mountains. If an ambitious local conservation plan fulfills its promise, this swath of nature in southern Arizona will continue beneath a freeway, connect to other nearby mountains, and create an unbroken habitat beltway for animals ranging from javelina and bobcats to desert tortoises.

“In Pima County, this is the only spot to connect a wildlife corridor between two mountain ranges," says Campbell, executive director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection. Since the late 1990s, Campbell’s group has helped spearhead an ambitious conservation plan for the 9,200-square-mile county that encompasses Tucson, several suburbs and increasingly populated rural areas, along with vast stretches of vital desert habitat. Conservation can’t come too soon: Pima’s population growth is twice the national average, and about 10 square miles of desert are bulldozed here each year.

To make the ambitious Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan a reality, county officials and conservationists have shared a place at the table with developers, ranchers, an Indian tribe and business leaders. “We really wanted to create a comprehensive, intelligible document that real people could understand—a sustainable model for [long-range] planning," says Pima County Manager Chuck Huckelberry, who helped shepherd the plan through years of stormy debate. “And I think we’ve succeeded in doing something that hadn’t been done before."

Pima County is one of several places across the nation working to understand and accommodate the needs of nature while promoting growth in the right places. In a new book, Nature-Friendly Communities (Island Press, 2005), authors Christopher Duerksen and Cara Snyder profile 19 places—from Arizona to Minnesota, and California to Connecticut—that are on the vanguard of a new, cooperative approach to protecting habitat and open space (see sidebar on page 29). Part of the impetus for such efforts, the authors point out, is a growing realization that habitat protection makes good economic sense.

“We were looking for communities that were thinking outside of the box," Snyder says, “those willing to take their vision a step further." She says Pima County is doing just that, with a goal of setting aside thousands of acres of Sonoran Desert as wildlife habitat. These sensitive areas are home to approximately 2,500 species of pollinators such as rufous hummingbirds, monarch butterflies and the lesser long-nosed bat, and an additional 500 species of birds, in one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. “Pima County is approaching open space on such a large scale," she says. “With its conservation plan, the county is considering the ecosystem as a whole."

Pima County’s plan grew from the need to protect critical habitat for the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, listed as endangered by the federal government in 1997. “That was the hammer," says Campbell. “With the pygmy owl listing, the county had to have some sort of response." But transforming that response into a large-scale, multi-species protection plan required broad community support. That’s where economic trends come into play, says Duerksen. Given the high cost of installing roads, water lines and sewer systems, local governments “are finding it’s often more cost-effective to leave spaces open than to develop them. They’re finding that preservation pays."

That’s particularly true in Pima County, where desert beauty fuels a hospitality industry employing more than 36,000 people. “Everyone [in the tourism industry] should have an interest in protecting and enhancing our natural environment," says Richard Vaughan of the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. “We all understand the importance of that."

Home buyers are also demanding more green areas, says Roger Yohem, vice president of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association. “Builders provide a service, and they respond to demand. And what we’re seeing is that consumers want more space."

Still, forging a conservation plan acceptable to everyone was “a very hard process," recalls Huckelberry. “We started with a steering committee of 100 people from both sides of the spectrum—extreme property rights folks and extreme environmental folks. And we were called every name in the book."

Huckelberry displayed a keen ability to keep the project on track. First, he dispatched biologists to map out critical habitat for threatened species, including the pygmy owl. He also reached out to business leaders and ranchers, giving them an equal voice with environmentalists and scientists. By relying on sound biological data and keeping politics at bay, the steering committee was able to hammer out the basic elements of a plan. Prodding them along was a state law, passed in 2000, requiring communities to update their comprehensive plans for accommodating growth.

Still, there were plenty of bumps in the road. In May 2004, for example, voters were asked to approve a $174 million bond for buying open space under the plan. The money was critical, says Huckelberry. “We could do all the wishing we wanted to, but unless we had money, it was difficult to implement our conservation programs."

As polling day approached, the home-builders’ group threatened to launch a $250,000 campaign against the bond proposal. The builders were concerned the conservation plan would lead to endless new land-use regulations and private-property condemnations. Huckelberry met with representatives of the group, assuring them that regulations under the plan would remain constant, and condemnation of private property was off-limits.

“From day one, the building community was looking for one thing: certainty," says Yohem. “Builders want areas where they can build knowing what the rules are. We felt we had gotten that [assurance] from Mr. Huckelberry." The meeting proved to be a deal-maker: the builders backed off, and voters approved the bond by a 65.7 percent majority.

With initial funding, the plan can now move forward. If all goes as envisioned, the county will eventually have some 440,000 acres set aside to preserve species—a major achievement for both people and nature. But progress means continually building bridges between often-polarized groups. “We’re trying to put together a preserve that truly works for wildlife and for the community," says Campbell. “And we know that we need widespread community support to make that happen."

Can other communities that follow Pima County’s example succeed in producing effective, workable conservation plans? The answer, according to Cara Snyder, is an unqualified ‘perhaps.’ “Ultimately, what happened was this amazing confluence of federal law, state law and the right strategy," she says. “That’s something that may—or may not—be duplicated elsewhere."

Pima County resident Tim Vanderpool wrote about the effects of wildfires in the summer 2004 issue of Defenders.