Tucson Region
By Tony Davis
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.04.2009
The timing of Maeveen Behan's death couldn't have been more appropriate.
Seconds after the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to name
the county's million-acre conservation preserve area after her Tuesday morning,
Behan, 48, the official who made it happen, took her last breath. She had
been watching and listening to the meeting on TV from her bed at home.
That moment ended a yearlong battle with cancer and a 16-year career with the
county government that was capped by her role as the architect of a revolutionary
land conservation plan. It would eventually grace the pages of National Geographic
magazine and win recognition from the American Planning Association. Her last
job was director of the county's Office of Conservation, Science and Environmental
Policy after spending much of her career as a top aide to County Administrator
Chuck Huckelberry.
"It was a life well-lived," board Chairman Richard Elias observed
shortly after the vote. "I'm glad she was able to hear the words of the
board and statements from conservation people. It was kind of beautiful, in
a way."
The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan was first requested well over a decade
ago of the county by environmental groups, seeking to protect the pygmy owl
and other imperiled species in the desert from the bulldozer. It was first
formally proposed exactly a decade ago by Huckelberry as a way of preserving
not just cacti but mountain parks, cottonwoods and cultural sites.
But it was Behan who made it all possible. She rounded up top scientists to
form an advisory committee. She wrote or edited more than 100 reports on the
plan. She organized an unwieldy but ultimately effective Steering Committee
of 84 people from all groups with a stake in the conservation-development debate.
She brought in experts in economics, environment, wildlife, demographics and
planning to lecture the committee for months before the group put any thoughts
on paper.
Few people involved thought this would ever turn out much more than a bunch
of studies on a shelf when the process started. But it has been approved and
financed to the tune of $174 million in voter-approved open-space bonds — with
the likelihood of more open-space bonds on the ballot in 2010. She also fashioned
the idea of a Conservation Lands System — the reserve area that was renamed
the Maeveen Marie Behan Conservation Lands System on Tuesday — that became
the conservation plan's linchpin. Any developer who gets land in that area
rezoned for higher home densities comes under heavy pressure from the county
— although not a formal requirement — to set aside at least 65 percent of that
property as open space.
This system didn't come easily. Developers, environmentalists and ranchers
were wary about the effort, but most ultimately embraced or at least accepted
it. Behan made that possible by assuaging concerns about the plan from these
leaders. None of them trusted Huckelberry much, but they learned to trust her.
"Most of it was fear of the unknown, more about restrictions, about more
and more onerous command and control kinds of restrictions," recalled
Bill Arnold, a real estate broker and property-rights activist. "One of
the conversations she and I had early on was whether that was the way it would
go or the carrot-and-stick kind of approach, using incentives. She agreed with
that idea, to use the carrot to make property owners make the right choice."
Environmentalist Carolyn Campbell said she assumed the worst about the county's
intentions at first and recalled fighting with Behan a lot for a while. But "we
evolved, and I got to respect her intelligence and understood that she was
committed to conservation. The more reports and documents she wrote, the more
of our advice she took, the more we realized she was responsive to our concerns.
"I've never met anybody like her. I doubt I ever will," said Campbell,
director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection.
Contact Tony Davis at 806-7746 or tdavis@azstarnet.com
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/316102