$15 Million Urged for Santa Monica Mountains

An environmental coalition led by The Wilderness Society Saturday called on Congress to provide $88 million to acquire park and wilderness areas in California during the next fiscal year, including $15 million for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The report by 38 conservation groups said the wildfires that roared through the Santa Monicas last fall may increase opportunities “to purchase undeveloped portions of canyons, key wildlife corridors and trailways,” in the recreation area, which extends from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

The report recommends federal purchases next year in 35 areas in California--including Big Sur, Lake Tahoe and Cleveland National Forest--but calls for more money for the Santa Monicas park than for any of the others.

Jean Bray, information officer for the recreation area, said a $15-million appropriation would help with critical acquisitions, including at Paramount Ranch in Agoura and along the Backbone Trail--a path along the spine of the mountains that Bray said will be “nationally significant once it’s completed.”

The report, which seeks funding for hundreds of conservation projects nationwide, is a yearly rejoinder to the more modest requests contained in the President’s annual budget.

In the $1.52-trillion budget plan for fiscal 1995 he unveiled last week, President Clinton called for using $254 million for conservation projects from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, a pool of money derived mainly from oil and gas royalties from offshore drilling.

The Wilderness Society and its allies, including the National Audubon Society and Friends of the Earth, called for tapping $800 million next year from the fund, which typically amasses about $900 million per year.

G. John Roush, president of The Wilderness Society, called the Clinton proposal inadequate, warning that “time is running out for America’s last undeveloped lands. Every year there are more people, more development schemes, more dollars chasing these special places.”

“If we put off these purchases,” Roush said, “we’re going to lose a lot of these areas. Forever.”

The gap between the conservationists’ wish list and the Clinton budget is not so great as it was last year, however.

For example, this time Clinton proposed $5 million for the Santa Monicas park, but sought no funding for it last year, when the conservation groups recommended $30 million.

Congress eventually approved $4 million for the mountain park for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Created by Congress in 1978, the national recreation area is actually a mosaic of public parks, preserves and beaches, interspersed with private holdings. The National Park Service, which administers the area, to date has acquired 20,493 acres of the 35,000 acres it eventually hopes to own. The California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy also have significant holdings in the area.