TUCSON CITIZEN:  Mon., Feb. 5, 2007

Another year, another conservation plan

Valley Views by Steve Emerine    

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wants to spend more money on yet another multiple species conservation plan (MSCP). The plans are frequently criticized because federally required adaptive management features aren't effective. Huckelberry says that's because the feds haven't “articulated meaningful standards” for them.

Huckelberry admits the county has less need for a plan now that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service no longer lists the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl as endangered, and local cities and towns have annexed much of the land where the endangered Pima pineapple cactus is found.

But he still wants the board to get going.

Huckelberry wants to hire more employees to begin discussing in September how to monitor pygmy owls, pineapple cacti and other so-called “vulnerable” species listed in the religiously followed but unadopted Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan.

The pygmy owl got us into this mess when it was hastily listed as endangered. Environmental activists and their county allies used it to justify the Sonoran Desert plan and to con county voters into approving more than $200 million in open-space bonds in 1997 and 2004 to buy land for the owl and 40-plus other species.

Some business owners who rolled over for the 2004 open-space bond election, because they were told county bureaucrats would stop harassing them, now say the problems haven't stopped.

FULL OPINION: http://azbiz.com/steve_emerine/