Shuttering California state parks: not a bad idea, in theory

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to balance California’s budget by padlocking 80 percent of the state’s parks, and that puts environmentalists in a pickle. It’s a fine idea, in theory: nothing would be better for many of California’s natural places than a respite from the vehicle and foot traffic they endure from the state’s 37 million residents and 335 million tourists.
It’s not ideal for giant redwoods to host a constant parade of visitors, who compress the soil, fill the air with hydrocarbons, and pursue all manner of mischief, but the parade is better than the likely alternative, which inevitably would involve logging or land development or both.
So California tends to ‘preserve’ precious places not by sincerely preserving them, but by taming them for that stampede of tourists. It’s a compromised preservation, a much slower, much softer form of degradation, really. Some wild spaces do get preserved in more pristine form, but often by private or quasi-government land trusts, or by eternal standoffs over development proposals.
Shuttering the parks, in theory, would withdraw the meddling human hand and let them recover under the wise tutelage of Mother Nature. But parks are never really closed. There’s always a way in, and there’s usually someone who knows it.
Often, in California, that someone is the well-intentioned rogue who trespasses on a footpath cut by Chumash indians or Spanish explorers to watch a sunset on a secluded beach or a granite bluff, taking only pictures, as they say, and leaving only footprints. But California is not entirely populated by the angel hearted, as any random lineup of its residents will demonstrate, and vandals or poachers could harm the parks and wildlife.
Some spaces, as well, require the meddling human hand to supervise restoration and recovery projects. The Governator’s cuts could cost the jobs of half of the agency’s employees, including biologists and rangers.
The ideal solution, for people who truly love the environment, would be to lock the people out but keep the protection in. And the budget would be a swell excuse for such an unpopular action.
More on the parks cuts and the proposed budget from the San Jose Mercury News.
The 335 million tourists figure, which sounds insane to me–I mean, really?–comes from the California Travel and Tourism Commission.