ABSTRACT
The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan is a plan to direct growth to areas suitable for growth while conserving and protecting those natural areas and culturally significant sites in perpetuity, it was initiated by the Pima County Board of Supervisors following the successful 1997 bond election. Suburban sprawl was destroying vast areas of natural area and wildlife habitat at the edge of the Tucson metropolitan area. Although Pima County requires developers to mitigate impacts to cultural resources either through in-place preservation or through data recovery and documentation, significant aspects of the region's cultural heritage were being lost to development. Southern Arizona offers a set of concrete examples of the varied contexts where preservation archaeology has guided planning and implementation on multiple scales. Archaeology Southwest, a private, not-for-profit organization that is based in Tucson and works in the United State Southwest and Mexican Northwest has a site protection program as part of its commitment to preservation archaeology.
