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Its grassland and rolling hills are dotted by mesquite, prickly pear and cholla, and stretch west from Oracle Road for four miles toward the Tortolita Mountains.

But the fate of a crucial passageway giving mountain lions, bobcats and deer room to roam from the Tortolitas to the Catalina Mountains has been left hanging by a local government plan amendment affecting nearly 16,000 proposed homes on 14 square miles of state land north of Oro Valley.

Pima County officials have essentially walked away from negotiations over the corridor's fate because Oro Valley and State Land Department officials won't commit in writing to having the wildlife corridor land in this massive project sold below market value for conservation. The negotiations are part of broader discussions over the proposed Arroyo Grande development, stretching from the northern Oro Valley town limit to the Pinal County line.

Town and state officials say it's too soon to make such a commitment because there are other steps along the way where price issues can be settled.

The various parties have been negotiating two years. The talks are complicated by constitutional requirements that the state reap maximum revenue from its land for public schools. But the town still has several more legal steps to make before the development plan is set in stone.

The dispute stems from the Town Council's Nov. 19 6-1 vote, approving an amendment to the town's general land-use plan — the first step toward ultimate approval of Arroyo Grande.

Despite urging from Pima County officials and environmentalists, the amendment, while calling for saving the corridor, says nothing about the price of the land.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wrote in a memo to County Supervisor Ann Day this week the land likely will be developed or sold for conservation for far more than is justified. The county has offered up to $1,000 an acre.

The state will benefit from having development rights transferred from the corridor space to other land, and for the wildlife corridor increasing the value of neighboring developable land, he said in an interview.

The "double dipping," Huckelberry said, is "patently unfair to the local taxpayer."

"Our staff has done all we can on this matter at this time and we now need to focus our attention where open space acquisitions are possible in the near term," Huckelberry said in a letter to David Andrews, Oro Valley's town manager.

To Day, he wrote the town's action "leaves future preservation or development of said open space in limbo."

But state and town officials say they believe the land for the corridor will still be saved, and that it is possible to sell it for conservation for below-market prices. The problem is it's too soon in the tangled, long-term process to put the requirement that the land be priced at that level into writing, they said.

The state believes assurances for a sale price should be hammered out when the town drafts a separate pre-annexation and development agreement for Arroyo Grande, Land Department official Michelle Muench testified to the council.

Any future efforts toward developing the open space lands in this project are out of the question, said Town Councilman Barry Gillaspie, adding, "It will be a deal breaker."

His colleague, Councilwoman Salette Latas said other parties such as the Nature Conservancy could also step up to pay some of the ultimate cost.

"If they can't sell it, it stays there, open space, in perpetuity," Latas said. "If it turns out that Chuck Huckelberry is the only willing buyer, that's market value."

Tucson environmentalist Carolyn Campbell said the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection is "with the county 100 percent on this issue."

On other issues involving the development, "I've been really impressed with how far Oro Valley has come," she said, adding that maybe the group hasn't pushed the price issue as hard as it should have.

"What we've seen is that the development goes ahead, and we never have certainty that open space will remain in perpetuity till it's bought," said Campbell, the coalition's director.

The wildlife corridor is a bit more than a half-mile wide. It covers the bulk of about 6,100 acres, or 68 percent of Arroyo Grande, that the state land agency has committed to saving from development.

The corridor was described in a recent report from Northern Arizona University biologist Paul Beier and two colleagues. The land is mostly desert scrub, covered by palo verde and cacti and is in relatively good condition, Beier's report said.

"Nonetheless, within 10 years, sprawling residential development will sever this linkage unless aggressive measures are taken at once," said the report. Without this linkage, the Tortolitas will lose much of their diversity of species. Those species that persist will lose much of their genetic diversity, the report said.

In studies of 16 corridors statewide, "we have not seen rates of development of formerly natural land similar to what we have seen" in the Tortolita-Catalina area, the Beier report said.

Nicole Fyffe, Huckelberry's executive assistant, said the administrator's actions show a lack of confidence county officials have that further negotiations will bring the conservation assurances the county wants. Usually, the county doesn't pay for open space when developers set it aside for a rezoning, "but the Land Department insisted on receiving some funding.

"When the county gave the state agency a price for the land, "we got a letter back so wishy-washy. Whenever they had to put something in writing, they couldn't commit," Fyffe said.

The process of Oro Valley annexing the land will give the state time to address costs and benefits and allow it to balance all interests, the Land Department said. Without a proper accounting of costs and benefits to the trust set aside for public schools, it can't make any commitments that may be contrary to its constitutional obligations, the department said. It pointed out that state law requires sale or lease of lands to the highest bidder at public auction.

But Oro Valley Councilwoman Paula Abbott, who cast the lone no vote on the amendment, said the town should have approved the general plan and annexation agreement at once, or made them dependent on one another, to protect the town's interest. The annexation agreement "is the thing that has the teeth," she said.