Rebuilding an Iconic California State Park With Birds and Wildfire In Mind

In 2020, a blaze consumed Big Basin Redwoods State Park, incinerating cabins, blackening ancient trees, and imperiling endangered murrelets. Staff now want to reimagine the park to better ensure the seabird’s future.

People who love Big Basin Redwoods State Park remember it as a refuge. A place cool and damp and dark, crowned with frequent fog and layered branches of redwood, Douglas fir, oak, and madrone. But now there’s little shelter to be found here.

On a 90-plus-degree day in July 2021, Portia Halbert steers her Prius into the park through a tunnel of dense forest. The reprieve is brief: When we enter the burn zone, it’s as if someone has peeled off the roof. The ambient temperature rises, and verdant understory gives way to burnished copper. Halbert parks at a high overlook and leans out the window. From ridgetop to ridgetop, the view is mostly skeletal black trunks.

Photo: Nina Riggio / From the Audubon Society article