The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan turns 25 in 2026! Learn how to celebrate here.

The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP) is Pima County’s comprehensive strategy for protecting natural and cultural resources while balancing sustainable growth and development. It is a living, breathing plan that has remained the foundation of much of the environmental work in Pima County for 25+ years.

---

The Sonoran Desert is a beautiful and rugged place unlike anywhere else on earth. Here in Pima County, the plants, animals, and unique landscapes are woven into our identity, shaping our communities, recreation, history, and sense of place. Pima County is also one of the fastest growing regions in the country, but — thanks to the SDCP — we can protect the desert while balancing responsible growth.

Back in 1997, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl’s population collapse and listing as endangered prompted the Tucson community to reckon with growing development pressures in the desert. The Coalition for the Sonoran Desert Protection Plan (our original name!) was created out of this community response.

After years of negotiations, nearly 100 stakeholders across Pima County finally agreed that we all benefit from a protected, valued, and healthy Sonoran Desert — and that a conservation plan was the way to achieve it.

The Coalition was a leading voice in the SDCP’s creation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. To this day, we keep a watchful eye on its application to specific development projects.

We are the watchdog for the SDCP, ensuring that land-use decisions and policies uphold the plan’s goals of protecting the region’s natural heritage.

How does the SDCP protect the Sonoran Desert?

The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan allows our community to grow while protecting the features that make Pima County special, including its mountain ranges, riparian areas, abundant native wildlife, and opportunities to experience the Sonoran Desert’s solitude.

The SDCP is more than a single document — it is a collection of programs, policies, and conservation tools that work together to protect Pima County’s natural resources and landscapes. Key components:

• The Multi-Species Conservation Plan protects habitat for 44 covered species and helps Pima County comply with the federal Endangered Species Act while allowing responsible growth and development.
• The Conservation Lands System identifies the region’s most important biological resources, including core habitat, riparian areas, and wildlife linkages, and guides land-use decisions to help conserve them.
• The Riparian Habitat Mitigation Plan Guidelines provide a framework for avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating impacts to rivers, streams, washes, and other riparian areas that support wildlife and ecosystem health.

“Together we have accomplished something that other communities both admire and envy,” — Carolyn Campbell, founding Executive Director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection

Interested in learning more? Watch the full 30-minute version.

The SDCP in action today

Almost three decades after its creation, the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan remains the foundation of conservation across Pima County. It guides decisions on land use, wildlife habitat, open space, cultural resources, and growth and provides a shared framework for conservation organizations, government agencies, and community partners.

The Coalition uses the SDCP to:

• Guide our conservation priorities and advocacy efforts
• Support the protection of key wildlife habitats and linkages, and connected landscapes
• Advocate for open‑space acquisitions and conservation investments like wildlife crossings
• Review development proposals and encourage designs that avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts on natural resources
• Promote policies and planning decisions consistent with the SDCP’s conservation goals

Awards and acknowledgments

The SDCP planning process has won both Pima County and the Coalition over a dozen local, regional and national awards, including:

• Best Plan & Multi-Agency Coordination (2001 Arizona Planning Association)
• Distinguished Leadership (2001 Arizona Planning Association)
• GIS Approach to Reserve Design (2001 ESRI User Conference, Best Instructional Presentation)
• Public Education (2002 Arizona Planning Association)
• Priority Species Habitat Distribution Modeling (2001 Southwest Arc/Info Users Group, Map Poster Contest)

The SDCP has also received national media attention from Time Magazine and National Audubon Magazine, and it is featured in Nature-Friendly Communities, a book by Chris Duersken and Cara Snyder, and Safe Passages: Wildlife, Highways, and Habitat Connectivity, edited by Jon Beckmann et al.

Learn more on Pima County’s website.

---

The Conservation Lands System

The Conservation Lands System (CLS) is considered the backbone of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP). The CLS was constructed based on the science of the SDCP with participation and oversight by the SDCP Science Technical Advisory Team and according to the most current tenets of conservation biology and biological reserve design. The five tenets of the CLS are to:

• Perpetuate the comprehensive conservation of vulnerable species;
• Retain those areas that contain large populations of focal vulnerable species;
• Provide for the adjacency and proximity of habitat blocks;
• Preserve the contiguity of habitat at the landscape level; and
• Retain the connectivity of reserves with functional corridors.

The collective application of these individual tenets produced a CLS that retains the diverse representation of physical and environmental conditions, preserves an intact functional ecosystem, minimizes the expansion of exotic or invasive species, maximizes the extent of roadless areas, and minimizes fragmentation.

Along with the CLS map, the CLS includes an associated set of open space preservation guidelines for development projects that must go through the rezoning process or some other discretionary action. If a landowner develops on their property and does not request a higher density zoning, then the CLS does not take effect.

If for some reason the landowner exceeds the developable percentage allowed, CLS guidelines state that land must be purchased off-site to off-set the disturbance of lands that would otherwise be preserved. The off-site mitigation guidelines call for a specific purchase to disturbance ratio depending on the CLS category. Off-site mitigation ratios are as follows:

• Biological Core Management Areas: 4:1 ratio when disturbance is greater than 20% of the property.
• Special Species Management Areas: 4:1, when disturbance is greater than 20% of the property.
• Multiple Use Management Areas: 2:1, when disturbance is greater than 35% of the property.

These guidelines are instrumental to building a robust open space preserve system in Pima County to ensure that the regional health of the desert is maintained and enhanced.

The Coalition successfully works with private property owners to apply Conservation Lands System guidelines to their projects. This largely consists of the inclusion of contiguous natural open space on their properties, and occasionally mitigation through the off-site set-aside of other parcels of land.

The CLS was in part based off the work of Dr. William Shaw, who chaired the SDCP Science Technical Advisory Team. Dr. Shaw’s 1986 report Critical and Sensitive Wildlife Habitats of Eastern Pima County is credited as the first effort in Pima County to incorporate considerations for wildlife, wildlife habitats, and wildlife movement corridors. The report includes the “Bunny Map” below.