VIEWPOINT : With Friends Like These, California Parklands Don’t Need Enemies : Where else but in the capital of special effects could a Reagan or a Deukmejian play John Muir?

When James Watt was U.S. Interior secretary, his hostility toward the environment became a popular theme of political cartoons. Sketches depicted a mythical Watt National Forest as a moonscape befouled by oil spills and denuded of trees.

The humor lay not just in the images, but the absurdity of naming a nature area for a guy like Watt. Since then, however, the line between reality and satire has been erased by a crop of namesake parks honoring people known for their indifference to the environment.

One such park is the former Inter-Valley Ranch in northern Glendale, a rugged 700-acre tract in the shadow of Mt. Lukens. Local conservationists and park officials hoped to prevent development of the ranch and acquire it for the public. The effort hit a snag when Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed $2 million in state matching funds to help purchase the land.

Deukmejian’s opposition was nothing personal. After all, the governor also tried to dismantle the California Coastal Commission and once sought a zero operating budget for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the state agency that preserves open space in the Santa Monicas and neighboring mountains. The Inter-Valley purchase should only be funded as part of a state parks bond issue, Deukmejian declared. Then he opposed bond measures that included the project.

Over Deukmejian’s objections, however, California voters in 1988 approved the Proposition 70 parks bond initiative. With those funds, Inter-Valley Ranch became a public preserve. And long after such details are forgotten, the park will remain a monument to Deukmejian’s environmental stewardship. That’s because Glendale officials, seemingly oblivious to the irony, named the preserve the Gov. Deukmejian Wilderness Park.

In his career as a Los Angeles County supervisor, Pete Schabarum distinguished himself as a champion of developers and caustic critic of environmental groups. He didn’t like big spending programs--and conserving open space was no exception.

But Schabarum, like Deukmejian, has acquired the type of environmental credentials that stand the test of time. He, too, has a namesake nature area, thanks to a decision by his fellow supervisors to rename Otterbein Regional Park in Rowland Heights the Schabarum Regional Park.

The Reagan Administration is remembered for James Watt, the scandals at the Environmental Protection Agency and its efforts to sell off parts of the public domain. Reagan sought to eliminate land purchases for national parks and wildlife refuges. A modest acquisition program continued only at the insistence of Congress.

One casualty of the Reagan years was the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. For lack of funds, a number of priority tracts in the Santa Monicas were lost to development. And because lands sought today cost much more than they would have a few years ago, the park may never be complete.

But let’s not stumble over the fine print. In the long run, Reagan may be thought of as a benefactor of the recreation area--thanks to a landmark within it that actually bears his name.

Reagan Meadows, as the area is known, differs from the Deukmejian and Schabarum parks. Reagan once owned the land in question, accounting for its name. No one campaigned to name it after him.

However, there was an attempt to put Reagan with the others in the pantheon of local conservation heroes. In 1986, Los Angeles County supervisors passed a resolution urging that the Angeles National Forest be renamed the Reagan National Forest--in recognition of Reagan’s “special love for the outdoors.”

(Conservationists have tried turning this name game to their advantage. Organizers of Proposition B, the county parks bond initiative on last November’s ballot, made sure it included funds for the Schabarum Regional Park, hoping to win the supervisor’s support. He opposed it anyway, and it fell short of the two-thirds vote needed.)

It is tempting to see this flight from reality as a reflection on our political culture. Where else but in the capital of special effects could a Reagan or a Deukmejian be made up to play John Muir? At the same time, such pretense, arguably, does no harm--and provides an unintended dose of comic relief.

It’s a bitter joke, however, to those who have worked to preserve our natural heritage. Whatever they’ve accomplished has been in spite of, and not because of, these dignitaries. “All of these names are ridiculous,” Bob Hattoy, Southern California/Nevada regional director for the Sierra Club, said recently.

It may be “good for a chuckle” today, he said. But “100 years from now, when schoolchildren are taking a hike in Reagan Meadows or Deukmejian Wilderness or Schabarum Regional Park, they might think these people” actually cared about the environment.