The MAPWaters Act has cleared Congress and is headed to the President’s desk.
A string of storms this fall left Death Valley doing what it rarely does: collecting rainwater.
California State Parks’ Program, Coordinated with CalFire — Recent Operations Focused in the Santa Cruz MountainsCalifornia State Parks crews are continuing to conduct pile-burning work across the state. The most recent announcement is that they are targeting the Santa Cruz Mountains with pile burns planned across Big Basin Redwoods, Castle Rock, and Henry Cowell (including the Fall Creek unit). Operations are planned, as weather and air-quality windows allow, through April 2026. This is hands-on fuel reduction; not spectacle, not a shortcut, but a deliberate effort to remove the dry wood and brush fuel that can turn a lightning strike or a stray ember into a catastrophic, large-scale, landscape-devouring wildfire.
On October 30 the Bureau of Land Management lifted seasonal fire restrictions on BLM-managed public lands in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, southern Inyo, eastern Mono, San Diego, and eastern Kern counties. Campfires, barbecues, and gas stoves are allowed again on those BLM lands — but only with a valid California campfire permit. Permits are required outside developed campgrounds and are available for free at readyforwildfire.org or at any BLM, Forest Service, or CAL FIRE office.
A stubborn storm parked over Death Valley on November 15, 2025, and the desert didn’t know what hit it: Furnace Creek recorded 0.6 inches of rain — a number that’s more than a quarter of the park’s usual annual total. In terrain that sheds water off bedrock and washes it down into narrow canyons, that half-inch-plus didn’t soak in; it ran hard and fast, turning arroyo channels into destructive flows of mud, rock, and debris that have chewed up road shoulders and left pavement buried or gone.