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Soaring oceanfront land prices have come between old friends and threaten a Puerto Peñasco marine ecological research institute with strong ties to Tucson.

A Mexican judge's injunction has stopped bulldozers, making space for upscale condos, that last weekend knocked down part of a wall outside CEDO.

CEDO — Centro Intercultural para el Estudio de los Desiertos y Oceanos or the Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans — has operated near the beach at Las Conchas outside Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, since the early 1980s.

A not-for-profit registered in the United States and Mexico, CEDO annually hosts 15,000 to 20,000 visitors, including busloads of Mexican and U.S. students who come there to study marine and coastal biology, according to Executive Director Peggy Boyer.

The institute and its nearby lively tide pools are familiar to thousands of Tucson students who camp out at CEDO during field trips.

But Boyer said Friday that CEDO's work is threatened by a proposed 47-unit condominium, part of which is to be built on land that has been used by CEDO for 26 years.

The CEDO parcel is part of roughly 16 acres acquired by Scottsdale developer Clifton-Meridian, and which includes about four acres Patrick Clifton says his company wants to give to CEDO. Clifton valued the property and buildings at $1.5 million.

But Peggy Boyer and CEDO Co-director Richard Boyer said the land is not necessarily Clifton's to give. "Our position," Richard Boyer said in Tucson Friday, "is that 26 years of continuous operation on land specifically donated for the purposes we are carrying out gives CEDO title" to the property under Mexican case law.

He said Mexican law assigns some rights to long-term untitled occupants of property, almost akin to homesteading rights in the United States.

The dispute came to a head when bulldozers showed up last weekend and knocked down part of a serpentine wall that surrounds CEDO's large, two-story main building and part of its botanical garden.

Peggy Boyer said people affiliated with CEDO attempted to block the bulldozers, which were doing preliminary work on a road realignment needed for the planned condominiums. Ultimately, the Boyers said, the construction was probably stopped by concerns that they were threatening endangered plants in the botanical garden next to the wall.

The Boyers object to a chain-link fence erected just outside the main building's front entrance which they say denies access to the building.

Clifton said it was his understanding that the fence was temporary and intended just to protect CEDO staffers and visitors by preventing them from entering the construction area.

The dispute is complicated because it is between people who were, and some of them say still are, old friends.

Carl Hodges, founder of The Sea Water Foundation, which sold the property to Clifton-Meridian Corp., and his wife Beth, director of the The Sea Water Foundation, are also founders of CEDO.

Carl Hodges, retired head of the University of Arizona's Environmental Research Lab and a former Biosphere 2 consultant, has been involved in ecological projects worldwide.

Neither of the Hodgeses could be reached for comment, but Howard Weiss, a spokesman for The Sea Water Foundation, said they remain strong supporters of CEDO and stipulated that the buyer of the property ensure that CEDO be granted rights to the buildings and land it had been occupying.

Weiss said the proof of ownership of the land and buildings is evidenced by the fact that The Sea Water Foundation, and not CEDO, has been paying the taxes on the property.

Under Mexican law foreigners cannot own property near the border or along coastlines but can hold long-term property rights through bank trusts.

Asked about CEDO's ability to continue to operate, Peggy Boyer said she wasn't willing to concede that the project would be built, saying that CEDO has "filed for our property rights."

Clifton, too, has long-standing connections and says he admires CEDO's environmental and ecological work.

"My parents were, along with the Hodgeses, the original four founding members of CEDO. So, I have a lot of baggage here. I want to be able to show up at Thanksgiving and Christmas."