Opinion: Arnold Schwarzenegger: The parks dude

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This, apparently, is how to win a parks award: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sided with the toll-road agency and against San Onofre State Beach, supporting plans to build a freeway through the length of the park.

Then as soon as the budget got incredibly bad, one of his first ideas was to close a couple hundred state parks, even though the savings were relatively paltry. He backed down on that only after an analysis showed that it could be more expensive to close the parks than to keep them open because of the potential for vandalism, fires and illegal use.

On Thursday, the governor will receive an award from the National Park Trust for his record of supporting and protecting parks. This is a little befuddling, to say the least. Oh, wait, there was that moment when he told the federal government that he wanted California’s road-free areas in its national forests to remain road-free.

If this is how awards are given out, we could have fun imagining similar honors. Nadya ‘Octomom’ Suleman for the Zero Population Growth Award? The possibilities are endless.

-- Karin Klein