Big Basin rebuild plans revealed in CA State Parks draft summary
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. (KION) - California State Parks is holding a webinar on Thursday night from 6:00pm to 7:30pm on the new plan for Big Basin Redwoods State Park. You can register for that webinar at reimaginingbigbasin.org.
Original Article - The oldest state park in California, being reborn into a new park. California State Parks is releasing new details on plans to rebuild Big Basin Redwoods State Park following the CZU Lightning Complex fire.
Plans include rebuilding the former park headquarters as a more ecologically sensitive hub for day-use activities.
Campgrounds will also be rebuilt in several spots. However, ones in more sensitive old-growth areas might be removed.
"It's amazing to see that they are still living after they have the charred bases. It's such a testament to resilience," said Steven Low, who visited the state park.
Nearly all infrastructure here was destroyed in the 2020 CZU fire. Now, California State Parks aims to bring the park back to life with modern upgrades to face a changing climate.
"The goals to rebuild Big Basin are to include more resilient materials for building structures and also siting structures to be in areas that can be more defensible in fire."A lot of areas are still hazardous and not open to the public. Also, we lost a lot of infrastructure that's needed to have visitors to the park, like the water system and the sewer system. There's no power in the park yet. So all that stuff needs to be replaced to have full access back to the park. And yes, that will include camping." "We need to rebuild several miles of water infrastructure and sewer infrastructure, a new sewer treatment plant, and a water treatment plant," said Will Fourt, Senior Park and Rec Specialist.
Visitors like Jay Thompson, who has been coming to the park for decades, are glad to hear the park is being rebuilt.
"Just happy that they're going to rebuild it. It was great before, and if they can do that again, it's wonderful," said Thompson.
State parks are also focusing on the growth of the forest.
"We plan to strategically remove some of those parking areas and do some ecological restoration work there to restore some of the flows of creeks that used to go through the area that have been perverted and retain stormwater and restore some of natural hydrology there, which is important for the health of the forest there," said Fourt.
Fourt, who's from the Santa Cruz mountains himself, says rebuilding won’t be quick, but community patience runs deep.
"We've seen, just for members in the community to rebuild homes, those homes are mainly just starting, now just finished. So, just to rebuild one home has taken three, four, even five years to rebuild; we're rebuilding an entire community. So it will take a long time," said Fourt.
Will says since the park reopened to the public in 2022 — two years after the fire — they have had upwards of 150k visitors.
State parks will hold a webinar where they will release more information to the public on July 10.
