U.S. Gives $353K For Land Deal

By Tony Davis
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
August 17, 2003

The federal government has given Pima County a $353,000 grant to help buy a ranch west of Three Points, but the deal may not go through. The Old Hayhook Ranch is worth acquiring now, despite its distance from Tucson 's developing areas, because of wildlife habitat and archaeological sites on the land, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said.

Whether the county spends a penny on Hayhook may depend more on the outcome of land price bargaining than on conservation issues.

Disagreements over price between the county and ranch owners "more than likely" could keep the purchase from occurring, Huckelberry said last week. The 839-acre Old Hayhook Ranch lies on the western edge of the Altar Valley , just east of the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.

County officials say the site contains suitable habitat for 20 of the 55 vulnerable species that its land conservation plan seeks to protect. They include the endangered pygmy owl, lesser long-nosed bat and Pima pineapple cactus and the threatened Chiricahua leopard frog.

The ranch contains eight archaeological sites and adjoins the Coyote Mountain Wilderness, owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.  

"Just about all" the archaeological sites, dating to the Hohokam era, are eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, said Allen Dart, a Tucson archaeologist who has studied this area. But a critic of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan contends the county should spend its limited land protection dollars on lands more imminently threatened with development.

"They need to focus on the very most sensitive lands that absolutely are screaming for preservation," said Steve Emerine, a public-relations consultant for the real-estate industry.

The federal grant to Pima County is one of four new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grants, totaling $1.6 million, coming to Southeast Arizona for land purchases and conservation planning.

The other grants are: 

* $327,990 to the city of Tucson to prepare a habitat conservation plan covering 26 square miles of recently annexed far South Side land, thousands of acres of city-owned land in the Avra Valley and the entire Santa Cruz River channel within the city limits. 

* $350,000 to the state to help purchase 1,400 acres in and around Coal Mine Springs, in a tributary to Sonoita Creek, to protect the state's second- largest population of the endangered Gila topminnow from potential development. 

* $134,000 to Marana to continue work on a habitat conservation plan it started last year.

Emerine said the county shouldn't fall into the trap that the city did in 1999 when it bought the Bellota Ranch between the Santa Catalina and Rincon mountain ranges, 13 miles beyond the city limits. 

The county should "not jump around trying to buy land hither and yon that you can't get to," Emerine said. The city is trying to sell that property, now called the A-7 Ranch, to deal with short-term budget problems.

Jenny Neeley, southwest associate for Defenders of Wild-life, also said she would prefer that the county buy properties more imminently threatened: "Obviously, that would be the best use of the limited resources that the county has."

Huckelberry said critics don't understand that the site's archaeological resources are fairly significant along with the wildlife habitat. One archaeological site is a platform mound, a large structure that contained homes of elite Hohokam society, religious structures, or both, Dart said. Such sites are fairly common in the Phoenix area, but few are known in the Tucson area, he said. Five such sites lie in a larger area that Dart's firm surveyed in and near the Hayhook Ranch.

Overall, the sites on Hayhook are "absolutely" worthy of preserving, Dart said. Second, the federal grant money is limited and probably wouldn't support purchase of more expensive, immediately threatened land such as on the Northwest Side, Huckelberry said.

The site also contains good breeding habitat for pygmy owls, lies in a federally proposed owl recovery area and will allow for movement of the birds to other recovery areas to the north and to occupied owl habitat on the reservation to the west, the grant application said.

But the site lies in the Sonoran Desert plan's multiple-use area, where up to 35 percent of the land could be developed, not in the biological core, which is more scientifically valuable ground where developers are expected to save 80 percent of the natural resources.  

The site's developability, however, is uncertain because its only major road access is Coleman Road , which the O'odham tribal government is trying to close because the road passes through the reservation. Because of pressure from neighbors wanting other access, however, county officials say they hope to find money to build an alternate route that would connect to the ranch or other roads that lead to the ranch.

The county's 2002 grant application to the federal government envisioned the county paying $1.15 million for the property. The county would reach into its treasury for the balance beyond the grant. But last year, then-ranch owner Rodney Ledbetter listed the parcel for $6 million. He sold it to an out-of-state party in January 2003. The purchase price is shown as $650,000 on county records, but Linda Closs said she doubts the county can snag it for that price.

"It doesn't make sense. If it's listed for $6 million and sells for $650,000, something's wrong," said Closs, the county's manager of real property services.   Ledbetter's Tucson phone number is now disconnected. The current owner, Dale Barlage, of Jackson Hole , Wyo. , didn't return calls.

If the deal falls through, the county could get the wildlife service to apply the grant to another Sonoran Desert parcel if it offers similar protection to endangered species that the Hayhook Ranch would protect, said Sherry Barrett, the service's Southern Arizona field supervisor. If the county can't find a replacement, the money would revert to the service for use elsewhere, Barrett said. 

* Contact reporter Tony Davis at 807-7790 or at verdin@azstarnet.com.

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