Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan

Introduction

Urban growth and development in the west and in particular in the Sun Belt states has been rapid and sustained over a number of decades. Conventional metropolitan and regional planning has dealt with a number of obvious growth related urban issues, such as, adequacy of transportation infrastructure, water supply, waste and sewage disposal, natural hazard avoidance such as flood plain occupation and any number of other issues related to metropolitan growth and expansion. In fact, the Federal government, through legislation has mandated Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas over a certain population to form Metropolitan Planning Organizations. These organizations were formed to deal with the typical problems of metropolitan growth and expansion yet many of the conventional problems of rapid population growth remain unsolved today.

In the decade beginning in 1990, some communities began to search for a different approach to metropolitan growth and development by discussing and sometimes implementing urban growth boundaries. Locating and defining urban growth boundaries are often arbitrary which leads to rancorous debate over the appropriateness of the boundary and even the concept for controlling metropolitan expansion.

The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan steps away from conventional metropolitan and regional planning theory and uses a relatively new concept in regional planning, simply called bio-planning or natural resource assessment and planning as a necessary first step in defining and determining urban form. This method of planning assumes that all urbanizing areas are endowed with certain natural, cultural and historical resources that should receive protection from or even exclusion from urbanization. This is the basic planning principal upon which the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan is based.

Rapid Growth and Continual Urbanization Collides with Natural Resource Protection

For the last several decades Arizona has been one of the fastest growing states in the country. In the decade from 1990 to 2000 the population in Arizona grew from 3.66 million to 5.1 million, an increase of 40 percent. This population expansion makes Arizona the second fastest growing state in the nation and top among traditional Sun Belt states. Figure 1 shows the percent change in population for the United States between 1990 and 2000. Pima County has undergone similar rapid population expansion. The population of Pima County grew from 666,000 in 1990 to estimates of at least 850,000 in the year 2000 or 30 percent, somewhat parallel to the aggregate growth rate of the state. Simply stated, this annual growth rate varies from between 15,000 and 30,000 persons each year and consumes at the present urban density approximately seven to ten square miles of the Sonoran Desert each year.

The Sonoran Desert, rich in biodiversity, has been called one of the top 200 ecoregions deserving of special conservation attention, given its more than 2,500 known pollinators, and 500 migrating or residing bird species -- a figure that represents almost two-thirds of bird species in the United States, Canada, and Northern Mexico, according the April 2000 Ecoregional Analysis of the area by The Nature Conservancy.

Based on this relatively rapid rate of natural resource consumption, it is not particularly surprising that conflict arises, not only with those who would argue the pro's and con's of urban growth, but also with global issues of plant and animal species extinction.

The attached figure shows a map of the United States and the number of threatened and endangered species listed in each state under the Federal Endangered Species Act. The high number of threatened and endangered species correlates directly to either past or present rapid population expansion and habitat conversion for urban growth. States with high population growth have a correspondently high number of threatened and endangered species as opposed to those who have undergone little growth or urban expansion in the last decade.

The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan uses this factual correlation to stress the importance of bio-planning to preserve and protect most important regional natural resources from urbanization. Without such, continual and escalating conflicts will occur between urban growth and plant and animal species extinction.

Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan Principles

Most urban areas have plans or programs that protect to some extent natural, historic and cultural resources. Pima County was no exception prior to the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan proposal. What is different under the Conservation Plan is that all of the sometimes independent natural resource planning and protection activities have been integrated into one plan. In the case of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, six elements were initially identified for integration into a unified conservation plan. Historically, the County has from time to time taken action on many of the elements independently. The six elements of the Plan are:

Ranch Conservation
Ranching is a significant historical and cultural land use in Pima County. Ranch lands have probably been the greatest determinant of a definable urban boundary in eastern Pima County and ranching has served to preserve natural open space as well as protect natural resources, open space and continues to be an important traditional industry which has shaped the urban landscape. Today, many of these ranches are threatened by urban encroachment. By helping ranchers stay ranching and promoting conservation ranching principals natural resources and the open space of Pima County will be better protected.
Riparian Restoration
It is not difficult to understand that riparian areas in a desert environment are important natural resources. Today, riparian resources which include aquatic areas are the most vulnerable habitats in Pima County. Sixty to seventy-five percent of all species in Arizona rely on a riparian environment during their life cycle. Decades of unintended destruction of these riparian systems, primarily in the present urban area, should be reversed through some level of riparian restoration.
Mountain Parks
Protecting the open and scenic beauty of the west has long been recognized as being important. Tucson National Park was first established by the Board of Supervisors in 1929 and has been expanded ever since. New mountain parks have and are being created primarily to protect scenic views from encroachment and destruction. However, preservation of these vast tracks of mountain lands also contributes to significant natural resource protection.
Historical and Cultural Preservation
Pima County is rich in history, culture, regional character and diversity. The foundation for the future is how well we preserve the past. Continued urban expansion threatens our cultural, historic resources and places. It is important that we preserve the past in order to learn the future.
Critical Habitat and Biological Corridors
The two elements that express the biological basis of the Plan are critical habitats and biological corridors. When the Conservation Plan was initiated, the scientific community did not have a list of vulnerable species of concern, a set of biological standards, or even a vegetation map that could serve as a starting point to determine current animal species that are need of protection or are in decline. These two elements of the original Plan, now combined into one, recognize the need for biological inter connectivity between subregions or areas that will be identified for conservation in the Plan. In addition, critical habitat recognizes unique Sonoran Desert habitat associations, not previously recognized, as promoting sustained Sonoran Desert bio-diversity. While the flower of the protected Saguaro Cactus is the State Flower, science has proven that the unprotected Ironwood Tree is really the tree of life in the Sonoran Desert.

Each of these independent planning elements are integrated and woven into the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan to provide the best scientifically defendable and most comprehensive set of natural resource, historical and cultural preservation goals.

Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan Products - A Conservation Reserve and Development Reserve

The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan combines short-term actions to protect and enhance the natural environment with long-range planning to ensure that our natural and urban environments not only coexist but develop an interdependent relationship, where one enhances the other. The loud debate over growth has existed for at least four decades and the only outcome to such a debate has been continued population growth -- on average 15,000 to 30,000 persons each year.

The Conservation Plan is not about whether the County continues to grow, it is about where the County grows. Growth should occur in areas with the least natural, historic and cultural resource values. The end product of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan will be to create a regional conservation reserve using the best science available where these values are protected. A conservation reserve will be formed by combining a Biological Reserve with a Historic and Cultural Reserve and a reserve to protect the scenic views and values of the County. Figure 2 shows shaded in purple a conservation reserve for eastern Pima County: it is in this area that urbanization should be either prohibited or limited in such a manner that the natural resource, cultural and historical values are protected or not substantially impacted.

When examining the Conservation Reserve it is apparent that everything lying outside of the Conservation Reserve that is not already public lands, becomes a conceptional Development Reserve. Simply stated, a Conceptional Development Reserve involves lands that do not have the values previously described within the Conservation Reserve and should be considered for urban conversion. It is at this point that traditional comprehensive land use planning picks up the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and determines the most efficient, least polluting and maximum revenue generating urban form for the community.

Economics of Conservation

The economics of conservation is vitally important. Some have expressed over the economic consequences of the plan. Will the region be able to afford the plan if new governmental revenue sources are necessary to implement it? Will the Plan harm or diminish the regional tax base? Will the Plan, if implemented, cause a scarcity of urban land and inflated prices for housing? These are all valid questions that have to be answered in the context of as compared to what. In the case of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan these questions will all be answered in an economic analysis comparing the Ano action@ or Ado nothing@ alternative to the preferred plan. Such is appropriate since had the Plan not been initiated, that=s exactly where the community would be at this point in time - doing nothing.

Can the Community Afford the Plan?
Implementation of the Conservation Plan will undoubtedly require additional governmental revenues. The amount and the extent of such is unknown at this time, however, many actions of the Conservation Plan have taken place without cost to the local tax payer. Formation of the Ironwood Forest National Monument and the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area conserved acres of very high resource value lands without cost to the local tax payer. Undoubtedly, State Trust lands within conservation areas will need to be acquired. In Arizona, debate continues and additional ballot driven constitutional amendments on State Land reform will be before the Arizona voters probably in 2002. Therefore, costs associated with including state trust lands in the Conservation Plan are unknown, however, conservation requests for such lands will continue to be before the Arizona voters.

Local tax payers have had a long history of raising property taxes for conservation purposes. The largest single State Park in Pima County was created as a result of voters authorizing a bond issue to purchase property from a real estate developer. For over 25 years, Pima County voters have supported property taxes to acquire open space for conservation.

A completion of a conservation plan that meets Federal Endangered Species Act standards will make Federal funding for Plan implementation available. If the present planning process had not been undertaken, Federal funding sources would largely have been unavailable to Pima County to implement the Plan.

Therefore, based on Federal creation of National Monuments and National Conservation Areas, the availability of Federal funds to implement the Conservation Plan, the willingness of local voters to approve open space conservation bonding and the continuing need for state trust land reform, the cost of implementing the Conservation Plan is very manageable.
Will the Conservation Plan Diminish the Tax Base?
Some have postulated that removing significant land areas of eastern Pima County from development potential will destroy the tax base and increase property taxes for everyone. The acquisition of large tracks of privately held open space only slightly decreases the accessed value of the County primarily because these lands are historically valued the least. Recently, the County purchased nearly 5,000 acres of an historic ranch known as Canoa Ranch. This ranch paid less than one dollar per acre per year in property taxes. Such is an amount equivalent to three or four single family homes. Therefore, the purchase of generally peripheral open space that is privately owned has had no impact on the assessed value of the County, nor has there been any shift in property taxes because of these acquisitions.

To a surprising degree, the value of the tax base is held on the improvements, not the land. The full cash value of eastern Pima County land and improvements is on the order of $34.7 billion. About 70 to 80 percent of that value is due to improvements which are mostly achieved through planned, regulated land development. In addition, over half of the County=s full cash value is in the single family residence. By identifying a Conservation Reserve and Development Reserve, the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan encourages regulated master plan communities that yield the highest property tax revenue returns. Unregulated development, which usually occurs on the far urban edge without the benefit of planning, typically has about one tenth the assessed value of regulated development. Given the probable Conservation Reserve of eastern Pima County, those lands being conserved are the most likely to foster unregulated development and destroy the tax base. Therefore adopting the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan will actually strengthen the tax base.
Regional Land Supply for Development
Another economic concern that has been expressed is that the Conservation Reserve will significantly reduce the supply of land for development and hence increase housing prices. Before the Conservation Plan was initiated, from 1991 to 1998 the average price of residential housing increased from $97,352 to $137,323, over 40 percent. Between 1998 to the year 1999, this price for residential housing increased to $147,180, up seven percent. Likewise, single family homes sold for an average of $149,512 in 1998 and the increase in 1999 sale prices was less than eight percent. It would appear that the average price of housing has not been significantly influenced by the Plan. Likewise, the supply of land for development will not be influenced. Much of the lands identified for the Conservation Reserve, lack basic urban infrastructure and should not even be considered in the development reserve. Development of these lands would most likely occur through unregulated development which results in the highest destruction of natural resources and least tax base growth. Lands within the development reserve are sufficiently available to accommodate 20 to 30 years of urban years of growth and expansion. For example, just within the boundaries of the City of Tucson, there exists almost sixty-six square miles of state trust land that should be released for urban development. This 66 square miles of planned under the concept of new urbanism including mixed use could provide for a population expansion of nearly 300,000 people - a twenty year supply from this source alone. If all State Lands within incorporated places are considered, the amount of land available for development increases to 82 square miles, which would accommodate more than 400,000 new residents.

Summary