Golf courses, retirement complexes and rapid development are most commonly associated with Maricopa County and its burgeoning cities, like Phoenix, Scottsdale and Glendale. But, these communities also want to protect a large portion of the surrounding desert environment and they are willing to tax themselves to accomplish their goals.

Cholla cactuses line the trails of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale.

Maricopa County alone offers a total of more than 120,000 acres of open space in ten regional parks, giving it the title of the largest county park system in the country. The County built connecting trails between some of these parks and decided to link them all with a 240-mile long connection called the Maricopa Trail that encircles the entire County. Together with the trails inside the parks, the County Regional Trail System totals 1,521 miles.

The City of Phoenix individually protects another 30,000 acres in its desert preserves, including the South Mountain Park/Preserve, which alone accounts for 16,000 acres. Phoenix has funded its land acquisition program with bond measures in 1988 and 2005 totaling $57 million. But true commitment was displayed in 1999 when the voters approved a sales tax of one tenth of one percent dedicated exclusively to open space preservation. Of the $256 million expected to be generated by this tax over its ten-year duration, $156 million is earmarked to acquire land in the Sonoran Preserve with the remainder to be spent on parkland improvements.

Just east of Phoenix, the City of Scottsdale plans to protect one third of its land area in a desert wilderness called the McDowell-Sonoran Preserve. In 1995, with encouragement and support from the McDowell- Sonoran Conservancy, Scottsdale voters approved the acquisition of a 16,640-acre preserve using a 30-year, two-tenths of one percent sales tax expected to generate $272 million. The proposed McDowell-Sonoran Preserve was later expanded to 36,400 acres and in 1998 the voters approved the use of the 1995 tax increase to acquire land in the expansion area. The voters returned to the polls in 2004 and approved an additional sales tax increase of 0.15 percent, expected to generate $230 million over its 30-year lifetime. These tax increases generate roughly $15 million annually and have resulted in the acquisition of all the privately owned land within the Preserve boundaries. The remaining land is State Trust Land, meaning land granted to Arizona by the federal government at statehood. State Trust Land is leased for grazing and also sold at auction to the highest bidder with the sale proceeds dispersed to public schools and other public services. The McDowell-Sonoran Conservancy hoped that a November 2006 ballot initiative would make it easier and cheaper for local governments to acquire State Trust Lands for conservation purposes. However, the voters of Arizona did not approve that initiative. Nevertheless, the City has now acquired roughly half of the proposed Preserve and has an enviable amount of revenue for accomplishing the rest of the acquisition.

To the south and north of Scottsdale, the towns of Fountain Hills and Cave Creek are also acquiring open space. To the west of Phoenix, the voters of the City of Glendale approved a $53.7-million bond for land acquisition and trail development.

Turning to federal land holdings, the Bureau of Land Management protects over 320,000 additional acres within nine wilderness areas in Maricopa County including the Big Horn Mountains Wilderness, home to desert tortoise and gila monsters as well as bighorn sheep. The northeast corner of Maricopa County is protected within the Tonto National Forest, which incorporates three wilderness areas including the 60,740-acre Four Peaks Wilderness offering wildlife and backpackers a rugged terrain that ranges from 1,900 feet to 7,600 feet in elevation.

Maricopa County may be best known for its stunning pace of growth, surpassed only by the Las Vegas, Nevada region for percentage population change between 1990 and 2000. Phoenix, for example, is now the fifth largest city in the United States. But despite that growth, Maricopa County and its cities are determined to save the best remaining unspoiled portions of the Sonoran Desert.