California State Parks’ Program, Coordinated with CalFire — Recent Operations Focused in the Santa Cruz Mountains
California 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 June 21, 2008 a lightning strike ignited the Basin Complex Fire, a wildfire that swept through 162,818 acres near Big Sur, forcing evacuations, and burning most of the Ventana Wilderness area. The fire destroyed much of the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park located the western slope of the Santa Lucia Mountains, and severely damaged the Pfeiffer Falls Trail, an easy 1.5 mile out-and-back trail with views of redwoods and Pfeiffer Falls.
The Land and Water Conservation Fund is a federal program was established by Congress in 1964 through a bipartisan commitment to safeguard our public lands – the natural areas, water resources and cultural heritage for all Americans – and provide funds and matching grants to federal, state, and local governments to acquire land, water, and easements. Through funding provided from offshore oil and gas leasing, the LWCF has protected and expanded habitat and preserved access to outdoor recreation in all fifty states, which makes it our nation’s most successful conservation program.
to meet January 1, 2020 Air Quality Requirement – Department honoring all current reservations