Babbitt Vows to Protect Federal Parks : Environment: At news conference in Santa Monica Mountains, Interior secretary blasts transfer proposal.

The nation’s highest-ranking environmental official Friday declared staunch opposition to a move to de-federalize urban national parks--particularly the Santa Monica Mountains--which he called “critically important windows into the natural world for the vast majority of urban kids.”

“As long as I am alive and breathing as the secretary of the interior, they are not going to do this on my watch,” declared Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in his first public comment on a Republican proposal to transfer many National Park Service holdings to state or local governments.

On the contrary, he said, he has urged President Clinton to expand federal acquisition of open urban space.

“We don’t have enough parkland in the United States of America. I am not going to give up one acre. None.”

Babbitt made his stand as he accepted the deed Friday to a 314-acre addition to the Paramount Ranch national park area in the hills south of Agoura.

Standing in an oak-shaded meadow that serves as part of the set for the popular television series “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” Babbitt said the recent de-nationalization move “is just plain bad medicine.”

He called on representatives of a variety of public and private conservation and environmental groups gathered for the ceremony to work together to oppose congressional efforts to curtail federal land ownership.

“We’re in this fight to stay,” he said.

Over the past 15 years, Congress has appropriated more than $150 million that has been used to buy about 21,000 acres for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which stretches from eastern Ventura County to Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

But appropriations have fallen significantly in recent years for expansion of the urban park to a proposed 35,000 acres. Rep. Anthony C. Beilensen (D-Woodland Hills) this week asked Congress to provide $4.3 million to $8 million for continued expansion. Conservationists fear that the sprawling park--much of which is within the Los Angeles city limits--would be the among the first to be targeted for removal from federal ownership.

Babbitt said the Santa Monica Mountains area is one of the nation’s most significant parklands because of its close proximity to the Los Angeles metropolis.

The interior secretary, who grew up on the rim of the Grand Canyon, said most urban children have little opportunity to visit the nation’s so-called “postcard parks” such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. He described the variety of landscapes within the Santa Monica Mountains, with its natural streams, meadows and hills, as “extraordinary and unique beauty.”

The parcel sold to the National Park Service Friday for $8 million is directly north of 436 acres of the Paramount Ranch which is already a part of the national urban park. The ranch was the site for years of the popular Renaissance Pleasure Faire and was threatened for decades by development.

In a unique move, the parcel was acquired in 1991 by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency, which purchased the bank note to the property held by a developer, then foreclosed on the loan. Officials said the deal may have been the first use of foreclosure to create a public preserve.

During the outdoor deed-transfer ceremony, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) said the grassy meadow was an appropriate place to draw the battle lines over the emerging debate to expand or reduce national park holdings.

“We need more parks, not less,” Hayden said, contending that Los Angeles has less parkland per capita than any other urban area in the country. He urged that additional mountain area be acquired “before we are flooded, burned and over-developed out of existence.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsy called the site “an incredible area just a stone’s throw from the biggest megalopolis in the United States.”

Rich in wildlife, history and natural beauty, the area attracted the Chumash to Medea Creek, which meanders through the land. The property was part of 4,200 acres purchased in 1927 by Paramount Studios for filming and was used over the decades for hundreds of films.

Accompanied by mounted park rangers, Babbitt on Friday climbed to the ridge of a mountain that resembles a smaller version of the Paramount Pictures logo. From the peak, he was able to overlook a panorama of grasslands, oak and walnut groves, streams and canyons along with an old Western town set revitalized by the park service and still a popular filming location.

He praised the “extraordinary beauty” of the place and praised the addition as “an important acquisition.”