by Dennis Wagner, Arizona Republic

IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT - Elena Daley, an administrator with the federal Bureau of Land Management, climbs atop a volcanic formation in the hills of southern Arizona and studies ancient petroglyphs scratched into stone by Hohokams.

There is a stick man, a pregnant sheep, a spiral.

In the valley below, springtime in the Sonoran Desert has created a verdant carpet dappled with poppies and lupines.

This place 30 miles from Tucson, with its dramatic vistas, archaeological heritage and unique ecology, is just one of more than 800 properties in the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System being touted for a new American preservation network.

Daley, the conservation-system director, is here to join forces with environmental groups in support of a congressional act that would permanently designate 26 million acres of Western lands for conservation.