Babbitt Opposes Shift in Ownership of National Parks
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 National Recreation Area--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,” said 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 national recreation area in the hills above 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.”
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