State Trust Land Proposal

WEDNESDAY APRIL 18, 2007


By Tim Hull, Special to the Green Valley News

Hundreds of acres of open desert west of Green Valley have been included in legislation listing State Trust land deserving of conservation.

Locally called the West Desert Preserve, the land has been the focus of a year-long campaign led by biking and hiking enthusiasts who use the State Trust land for recreation and as a buffer between this quiet retirement community and the large open-pit copper mines just to the west.

The land is traversed by several well-used trails and is home to more than 90 endangered Pima Pineapple cacti—a fact secured through a volunteer audit of the land's flora by a local hiking group.

At statehood in 1912, Congress gave about ten million acres of State Trust land to Arizona to be managed and sold to benefit the public schools and other state agencies. The land is sold to the highest bidder, often developers. Over the years various groups have tried to reform the process to allow environmentally sensitive lands to be taken off the auction block. That effort has failed several times, most recently last November when two competing measures were both shot down.

Now state lawmakers are working on two linked measures that would set aside about 196,000 acres of State Trust land which could be purchased at appraised value by local governments or groups for conservation purposes. Most of the land is adjacent to state and national parks and wilderness areas.

Initially, in the House version of the bill, the West Desert Preserve was not on the list eligible lands; however, about 2,000 acres of the preserve were added to the list by a Senate committee. That bill is currently stalled in the Senate, said Bill Adamson, chairman of the group Save the West Desert Preserve.

And even if the measures make it through to the governor's desk, one of them, House Concurrent Resolution 2039, would still have to go before the voters on the 2008 ballot, and Congress would have to weigh in and amend the original rules that put limits on how State Trust land could be used. Still, the group sees this newest legislative effort as its best chance for saving the land from large-scale development.

Adamson, a well-known local mountain biker who began the campaign to save the preserve, said he has hope for the latest reform effort because it doesn't go as far as those that failed last year. The most ambitious of the previous two measures would have set aside about 690,000 acres, while the latest effort seeks just 196,000 acres. "I am very hopeful," Adamson said. "I don't know if it's going to work, but this is the path we are on."

The group has made much progress in a year's time. Members have been able to convince 51 percent of Green Valley's households, as well and the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council and Green Valley Recreation, to support the idea.

Also, the West Desert Preserve has been added to a list of county lands eligible for future bond funding, possibly as part of a proposed 2008 bond election.

Tim Hull is a freelance writer.