Federal Official Seeks Mountain Park Advice

National Park Service Director William Penn Mott Jr. asked about 65 local environmentalists Saturday for their advice on a controversial, scaled-back set of priorities for buying land in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area.

And he warned them that getting money from Congress will be difficult, even for a reduced version of the park.

“I’m telling you there’s a great competition for park dollars, and there’s a lot of competition between the urban recreation areas,” Mott told an invitation-only meeting at Diamond X Ranch, a federally owned piece of the park network in the coastal mountains. “If you want to get your money, then you ought to put together a good marketing program.”

The park project has been repeatedly stalled since the recreation area was established 10 years ago by Congress.

It was envisioned as an ambitious effort to build a system of federal, state and local parks covering about two-thirds of the 150,000 acres in the mountains from Ventura County to Griffith Park.

But a federal budget crunch prevented Congress from appropriating all of the $155 million originally authorized. Now the recreation area is a series of unconnected park fragments bearing little resemblance to the urban wilderness environmentalists originally fought for. Meanwhile, many key properties once sought for the park have been developed.

Mott showed the group a map of land the Park Service could buy with the $76 million left in the authorization--a purchase plan that would increase federal holdings by 6,900 acres for a total of 20,000 acres, less than half the amount originally envisioned as the federal government’s contribution to the park.

Environmentalists have criticized the latest plan for concentrating too much on rugged back-country and writing off more expensive flat land that could be used for picnicking and other activities less strenuous than hiking. The plan has also drawn fire from naturalists, who say it does not provide enough space for plants and wildlife.

Mott told the environmentalists to submit an alternative plan for spending the $76 million to the Park Service and to Congress if they disagree with the Park Service map. After the meeting, Mott said he would not recommend seeking more than the authorized $76 million from Congress.

“I think it isn’t going to be easy even to get that authorized amount,” Mott said. “I think it would be a lot easier if they got support form the city and county . . . in the form of a donation saying, ‘We’re willing to give $1 million or so.’ That says something.”