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The lower slopes of the Tortolita Mountains' west side are blanketed with saguaros and ironwood trees. The ridgeline climbs steeply uphill toward Tortolita Mountain Park and its brown, rocky hillsides.

It's a picture postcard scene. But will this state-owned land stay that way?

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry has asked Gov. Janet Napolitano to assure the county that this parcel, 17,905 acres, will not be sold for development purposes.

The governor agreed in the past month not to sell five other state-owned parcels totaling 5,005 acres in the Tucson area and about 42,000 acres statewide for development without consent of local governments.

The parcels she has agreed to save have all been classified as conservation land by the State Land Department. They have never been permanently set aside as open space because of legal restrictions that make conservation of state land difficult to impossible.

In his letter in late January, Huckelberry asked Napolitano to assure the conservation not only of the Tortolita parcel, but of three other state-owned parcels.

If all the parcels Huckelberry wants to save are added to those the governor has already agreed not to sell, a total of 29,127 state-owned acres in Pima County would be protected from development at least until Napolitano's final term ends in 2010.

Most of this land lies amid the saguaro-ironwood forests of the Northwest Side, with some lying just north of Catalina State Park east of Oracle Road and scattered parcels lying elsewhere in the city of Tucson.

The Governor's Office hopes to respond to Huckelberry's request this week, said Lori Faeth, Napolitano's policy adviser for natural resources. She noted the state has no imminent plans to sell any of this land.

But environmentalist Jenny Neeley predicted Huckelberry will have a hard time getting the 17,905-acre parcel west of the mountain park protected because he previously withdrew an earlier application to the state to get those lands conserved in 2002.

All these lands have been proposed or approved to be included in the state's Arizona Preserve Initiative program. Created by a 1996 law, it allows local governments and other parties to buy and conserve state lands in urban areas that the state agrees to "reclassify" for conservation purposes.

This would happen despite state constitutional requirements that state lands earn the maximum possible revenue to raise money for public schools. That usually means selling them for development. Under the conservation initiative, the state sells the land, but the buyer can't legally develop it.

But since 2003, the state has stopped allowing the setting aside or sale of this land for conservation after a property rights group filed a legal challenge to the preserve initiative's constitutionality. The group People for the West had argued that the program was on shaky legal grounds because the sales didn't reap the maximum amount of cash that could be brought if the buyer could develop the land.

Because the preserve initiative land can't be sold for conservation, the state can't spend $100 million in matching funds that previously had been set aside to help local governments buy and save this land.

The land that Napolitano has agreed to not sell off is what the state had agreed to classify as conservation land. The land that Huckelberry now wants saved is land that the county either had asked to reclassify but the state hadn't decided on, or land that the county had changed its mind on.

The 17,905-acre parcel fits into the latter category. Over objections of environmental groups, in 2002 Huckelberry withdrew the county's application to have it conserved because Marana had just annexed the land.

"What that parcel really needs is real protection on paper, with signed promises that we are not going to develop that land," said Neeley, an activist with Defenders of Wildlife. "I don't know how Huckelberry will achieve that since he withdrew the application five years ago. It's a real shame he didn't listen to us back then."

Huckelberry said the county has historically filed for protection of state land only in places where it has control, and that's why he withdrew the application.

Now, the Marana Town Council has indicated it also wants the land preserved by passing a resolution asking the U.S. government to declare it a national monument. But back in 2002, it wasn't clear Marana wanted it all preserved, Huckelberry said.

Of his chances in succeeding with Napolitano, he said, "All we can do is ask."