Recommendations for Re-Imagining Big Basin— May 2022

The Bioregional Council is pleased to endorse the recommendations prepared by the California State Park Rangers Association (CSPRA) for restoring, managing, and operating Big Basin after the CZU Fire.

What follows below is a paraphrased and condensed version of the CSPRA recommendations — broken down by us into 9 key points. To see their recommendations in full, please read their letter, which is linked here as well as on our Home Page.

  1. The Big Basin Redwoods General Plan should be used as a guide for management, including the provision to keep major use areas outside of the prime redwood areas.

  2. New interpretive messaging is needed to indicate causes of mega-fires, how redwoods react to them, and how park managers can best respond.

  3. The fire and subsequent hazardous tree removal work has created a much more open forest canopy which has allowed sunlight to reach the forest floor. This, in turn, has created a dense growth of grasses, herbs, and shrubs that pose a new weed spread and fire hazard problem that needs to be addressed.

  4. Revegetation will be needed in some areas of the park. Those areas should be mapped and a native plant nursery created to provide suitable plant materials for use.

  5. Remaining areas of suitable marbled murrelet nesting habitat should be mapped out and protected from disturbance.

  6. The historic park headquarters building should be rebuilt in its original style but in a different location. It should be used for interpretation purposes and not as an operational headquarters.

  7. Archeological surveys should be conducted throughout the park to expand our knowledge of indigenous people’s use of what has become the park.

  8. The park infrastructure should be rebuilt and operated so as to minimize the carbon footprint and provide an example of how we as a society can reduce global warming.

  9. Messaging should not understate the threat posed by megafires. The character and impacts of the 2020 fire went beyond “nature’s way of renewing the forest.” Understanding the limitations of even a robust prescribed burning program, under the altered conditions of global climate change, should be part of the interpretive message to visitors.

 
 

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