Owl Dilemma Delays School Construction Near Tucson

By Mark Jennings

Although the pygmy owl is modest in size, it has been able to slow down bulldozers and confound a school system. As a result of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to add the creature to the endangered-species list in March 1997, environmentalists and developers in a southwest Arizona county are waging a battle, and a local school district is on the front line.

Since 1998, the Amphitheater district in Pima County has sought to build a new high school, but legal challenges to the land the district chose have tied the project up in the courts. Though the district has won in the federal courts and construction is moving forward, permit challenges by environmental groups are still threatening to delay the school's opening.

The desert climate of Pima County was once an ideal habitat for the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, but urban sprawl in bustling Tucson and its neighboring jurisdictions have have destroyed more than 90 percent of...