Nature Centers May Be Victims of Budget Cuts : Finances: Three San Gabriel Valley parks could face closure if county plan to save $574,000 by eliminating 15 staff positions is approved. Volunteers vow to fight because school children would suffer.

Three San Gabriel Valley nature centers that provide wilderness outings for thousands of school children each year probably would face closure under a budget-balancing proposal before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

By eliminating 15 staff positions in the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, the plan calls for essentially shutting down eight nature parks and 10 other protected natural areas countywide.

Locally, county officials say that would mean closing Eaton Canyon Park and its nature center 184 acres straddling the Pasadena-Altadena border. Also affected would be the 100-acre San Dimas Canyon Park and Nature Center and the 325-acre Whittier Narrows Nature Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in South El Monte.

“To close these parks would be just short of criminal . . . and pretty short-sighted,” said Walt Teilmann, a Sierra Madre resident and a leader of the volunteer docent program at Eaton Canyon. He is also part of a growing opposition movement against the plan.

Eaton Canyon, he said, “is not a pristine area but it’s one of the few areas with mostly native flora and fauna. It’s a great environmental resource that should not be lost. It’s an outdoor classroom.”

A fourth San Gabriel Valley nature area, the Peck Road in Arcadia, also faces closure. The Peck Road Park is primarily a fishing park.

If approved by the supervisors next month, the cuts would result in a savings of $574,000 and would help compensate for the $278 million shortfall expected in the county budget for 1991-92.

In response to the proposed cuts, an outpouring of critical letters and phone calls has flooded into the office of Michael D. Antonovich, Board of Supervisors chairman, who has vowed to reinstate funding for the parks and nature areas.

Last Friday, parks volunteers turned out to register their protests at a Board of Supervisors meeting. At the meeting, Mary Jung, assistant county chief administrative officer, defended the proposal by saying the nature park cutbacks were among the “difficult choices” that had to be made.

“Each of the programs were critical, but we had to make some choices,” Jung said. Among other suggested cuts is shutting the county’s Museum of Art for a second day each week.

Despite the proposed cuts, the $11.1 billion county budget would represent a 7.2% increase in current spending.

Countywide, the affected parks range from undeveloped sanctuaries for plants and animals to formal nature centers featuring Indian archeological displays or live animal exhibits. These include Placerita Canyon Nature Center in Newhall, Devil’s Punchbowl in Pearblossom and natural areas such as the Antelope Valley Wildlife and Wildflower Sanctuaries, east of Lancaster.

The 18 sites encompass more than 6,000 acres and during the last year attracted more than a million visitors, including tens of thousands of school children who participate in docent-led tours, according to the park officials and volunteers’ records.

The nature centers’ popularity has sparked the strong push to keep them open. An aide to Antonovich, Peter Whittingham, cited at least 100 phone calls and 300 letters in less than two weeks, saying that represented “an avalanche” of response on an issue.

Whittingham said it is Antonovich’s belief that the nature centers and natural areas provide “an essential service.” Whittingham said that next month during budget deliberations the supervisor will propose restoration of the proposed cuts. Whittingham said Antonovich believes he has support on the board to keep the nature funds intact.

“Los Angeles County is becoming more and more urbanized every day,” Whittingham said. “The natural centers and natural areas are among the few vestiges of yesteryear that people can go to.”

In the San Gabriel Valley, some 12,000 school children from throughout Los Angeles County, including inner-city students,visited Eaton Canyon on docent-guided tours last year, Teilmann said.

At Whittier Narrows and San Dimas Canyon, 8,000 school children toured in the 12 months ending last March, said Janice Macdonald, the county’s parks and recreation administrator for eastern region nature areas.

“For a lot of these kids, it’s their one and only chance to explore nature and see for themselves what nature is all about,” said Alice Nock, a Pasadena resident and president of a countywide group of volunteers, the Nature Center Associates.

James Okimoto, senior assistant director of the county Department of Parks and Recreation, said the department will attempt to keep some of the areas open even if the staff cuts are approved.

He said volunteers and county workers from other parks might be able to continue a few of the programs, which include nature walks, bird identification and live animal exhibits.

No matter what happens, Mickey Long, the supervisor at Eaton Canyon, said he is worried about the implications of proposing such cuts, especially in an age when environmentalism is supposedly chic.

“If we are not careful,” he said, “everything will be generic, like Raging Waters, Magic Mountain and Disneyland, where all you get is a short-term recreational high in a man-made environment. We can all use that, but we need to also be able to get out in the real world.”

Times Staff Writer Amy Pyle contributed to this story.