State Parks in the News

“For most of these students, they’ll never have the opportunity to come here to see this unique part of the California coast and the effects of preservation firsthand,” he says, sporting a wide-brimmed hat and khaki park ranger uniform. “Now we get to bring the park to them.”
The virtual field trips, or “distance learning,” as the state of California calls the web-based tours, were created through a California State Parks program called Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students, with additional funding coming from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The PORTS program began in 2004, when multimedia platforms on the internet were still in their infancy. Williford says park interpreters would give interactive tours while standing in front of a green screen inside a studio.

Due to issues involving its condition, the Anderson Marsh State Historic Park Ranch House has been temporarily closed and the popular Christmas event has been canceled this year. During the Clayton fire in Lower Lake in August, State Park Rangers and maintenance staff evacuated valuable items from the ranch house. During this process, State Parks determined that extensive cleaning and repair will be needed before the ranch house can be reopened to the public.

It’s hard to imagine how planners for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which builds and operates Orange County’s toll road system, could have devised a more environmentally damaging route. The opposition was so vehement, and the toll road agency so committed to the project, that it seemed the fight would never end. But it did earlier this month. The agency announced that it would never build the controversial route, ensuring the permanent protection of San Onofre State Beach and other sensitive environmental and cultural resources in the area. The deal was part of a settlement to end several lawsuits filed by the California attorney general and a coalition of environmental groups that sought to block the project.

According to the San Francisco-based nonprofit Trust for Public Land, more than 100 parks and open space measures were on the ballot in 2016, more than in any year since the 2008 recession; voters approved 80 percent of them. That’s worth celebrating, particularly in California, where the day after Thanksgiving is temperate enough in most places for us to #OptOutside, as the annual REI promotion puts it, and seek pastimes besides Black Friday bargains. This year, the Save the Redwoods League has teamed up with the California State Parks Foundation and the state Department of Parks and Recreation to offer first-come, first-serve free passes on Friday to 116 state parks.

Lucine Luna of Windsor paused along a trail in Jack London State Historic Park on Friday, gazing at part of the 1,400-acre Beauty Ranch once owned by the famous author.
“The colors of the vineyards are just — wow,” she said, observing the post-harvest red and yellow grape leaves adorning a slope. “That’s why we’re here.”
Luna and her daughter, Kathryn, were among the thousands of folks who opted to feast their eyes — for free — on Mother Nature’s cornucopia a day after feasting on Thanksgiving turkey.
The Lunas claimed two of the 13,000 parking and admission passes offered online in the inaugural Green Friday promotion co-sponsored by the California State Parks and two nonprofits, the Save the Redwoods League and California State Parks Foundation.

n the mid-1940s, the Salton Sea was a hotbed of activity, attracting Hollywood’s most glamorous actors and musicians to its yacht clubs and campgrounds. Now, what was once the largest lake in California is disappearing before our eyes and endangering all its life. We can still save it, but if we don’t, we will have a massive public health, environmental and economic crisis that could cost as much as $70 billion.

A recent survey of nearly 3,000 Americans and Canadians found that among the 1 million people who began camping for the first time last year, nearly 1 in 5 was black and 11% were Latino, nearly twice the rate for those groups in 2014.

On Wednesday, Brown vetoed Senate Bill 1333, by Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, that would have prohibited smoking at state parks and beaches.

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill by Senator Fran Pavley to enable the Department of Parks and Recreation to enter into partnership with a nonprofit entity to conduct such functions as raising private funds to improve parks and marketing the parks to promote increased public visitation.

This bill makes clear that trademarking of historic names in state parks by concessionaires without any independent basis for a claim is unacceptable and our state Department of Parks and Recreation cannot sign off on the type of trademarking conduct that produced the Yosemite dispute,” says Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova, the author of the legislation along with Assemblymen Frank Bigelow, R-O’Neals, and Adam Gray, D-Merced.