Rx Fire Updates

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Latest Press Releases

Rx Fire Updates

November 21, 2025
After burning a total of 127 piles over the previous three days, and we are finished burning piles at Castle Rock for the winter. Today we mopped up and put them out. As of this afternoon, the piles are out cold.

We'll likely be back to burning more piles at Big Basin and Henry Cowell after the holiday.

November 19, 2025
We burned 55 piles yesterday and another 44 today. We have some additional piles that we plan to finish up tomorrow and by Friday anticipate we will be mopping up. 

November 18, 2025
With all of the moisture we have had recently it sets us up nicely to begin burning piles. So all of this week, we are going to be burning piles at Castle Rock along  the ridge. This work has been to reduce fuels and thin the Douglas firs that have been overtopping the black oaks. 

October 11, 2025
We had a successful day burning! It's 7pm and we're still here watching the smoldering and talking with the public about what Good Fire means. 

Many folks were out and about enjoying the park and asking lots of question about what were up to,  we were pleased with the level of community interest in the event. We had many Docents, interpreters, and partners all present to help tell the story of fire.  We were especially excited to have a Native American blessing by Kanyon from the Indian Canyon Tribe who kindly shared her time and wisdom. 

We will be letting it burn overnight and tomorrow we are mopping up.  

October 10, 2025
We are looking good to burn a small redwood plot  as part of the Good Fire Fair. This is an exciting event happening tomorrow at Picnic area #1 in the day-use part of the park, we’d love to see you there! Here is a link to more information about that:

https://ucanr.edu/county/santa-cruz-county/event/central-coast-good-fire-fair-2025

We will be burning a <1 acre area between the main parking lot, store and visitor center.

October 9, 2025
We had great conditions for smoke dispersal and high hopes to get another hundred acres of our grasslands treated, but it was not to be. At about 12:30p, we dropped out of our prescription criteria for fuels and we had to pivot from ignitions to suppression. With help from two CalFire engines that were on the burn, our crews extinguished the burn and will continue to patrol throughout the evening. In the end, roughly 21 more acres were treated and our crew received good suppression experience.

CalFire will be burning 40 acres tomorrow, Friday, at Locatelli Ranch off of Empire Grade towards Boulder Creek. 

State Parks next burn will be a little one, at the Good Fire Fair this Saturday, at Henry Cowell--stop in and say hello!

October 8, 2025
Conditions look to have improved for tomorrow as far as smoke dispersal is concerned, so we will try again. This will be our last burn in the Wilder grasslands this season because the annual plants have greened up enough to reduce the effectiveness of our fire. We are targeting two smaller plots east of the Zane Gray Trail.

This weekend, we are co-hosting the Central Coast Good Fire Fair at Henry Cowell Redwoods SP on Saturday and hope to do a small demonstration understory burn in the redwoods at that event (weather permitting). Come by and learn more about how it all works.

October 7, 2025
We managed to get the Twin Oaks plot burned today, so we did get into triple digits for acres (108), but unfortunately we didn't get the atmospheric lift we wanted for the smoke which ended up impacting the community. Tomorrow, we will be giving the airshed a rest and focus on tidying up the plot we just burned. 

October 6, 2025
We had a good day burning but fell far short of our hoped for 200 acres. On days like this it’s good to remember that it isn’t always all about acres (of which we burned 27), we had experienced staff who were able to spend time training our newest recruits, as well as mentor some of our more seasoned staff. The reason for the minimal acreage was poor smoke dispersal that had our smoke staying low and impacting UCSC and the lower San Lorenzo Valley. The prediction for smoke dispersal is more favorable as we move later in the week. So, we will be back to try and burn our Twin Oaks plot tomorrow and if all goes well get into the triple digits with our acres burned. 

October 5, 2025
The natural resources team will be burning at Wilder Ranch this coming week starting on Monday morning and likely continuing through Thursday. Our current plan is to begin on the west edge of the Eucalyptus Loop Trail, along the upper portion of the Baldwin Creek Trail and if all go well, between the Twin Oaks Trail and Wilder Ridge. These burns are conducted to keep woody species from shading out and eliminating our grasslands and are conducted at this time when the grass will burn but the forest is too damp to carry a fire. 

October 3, 2025
Now that we have gotten significant rain, our plots at Wilder are in prescription and we are targeting Monday as our first burn day. By next Friday, the grass in these areas will be too green for us to achieve our objectives of knocking back the woody plants that are moving into our grasslands. We will be moving quickly as the opportunity comes to us, if we miss this window, we have to wait another year to burn these areas.

October 2, 2025
The weather forecast has significantly changed since last night and we are getting more rain than expected. It is now forecast to extend through the afternoon. We need sunshine on the grass to dry it out by about 10am and that is looking very unlikely.

This burn will be rescheduled.

October 1, 2025
We are back from our off season and planning to burn roughly 145 acres of coastal prairie habitat, tomorrow, Thursday, October 2, at the Cascade grasslands at Año Nuevo State Park. The burn will occur on the ocean side of Highway 1. Some sections of trail may be closed during burning operations around Whitehouse Creek Trail from Highway 1 to the beach.

The traffic may be slowed on Highway 1 during the burn operations. Please drive slowly.

You can now follow updates from us on the Watch Duty app by clicking the link below --check it out.

May 30, 2025
The crew was on the piles overnight and spent the morning mopping them up with water. They were out cold before the end of our day.

I think we are done with piles for now!

May 29, 2025
We have completed two days burning piles at Big Basin. We were joined by the Big Basin Volunteer Trail Crew yesterday for 15 piles along North Escape Rd. and today we were able to get another 15 piles along Dool Trail. The piles will be monitored overnight and we will mop them up tomorrow.  

May 27, 2025
State Parks is set to light some burn piles at Big Basin on Wednesday, 5/28, and Thursday, 5/29, along Dool trail and North Escape Rd. We plan to put the piles out on Friday, 5/30.

May 16, 2025
The crew got all of the piles that were lit yesterday at Huckleberry extinguished today. 

We still have some piles made by the Big Basin trail crew that we may try and take care of in the next couple of weeks if conditions continue to cooperate.

May 15, 2025
Conditions remained favorable this morning, and we successfully lit all piles at Huckleberry Campground in Big Basin. These piles were created after a chainsaw training in the park last year while working with downed limbs and trees left in the area after CZU. We will remain overnight and be mopping up tomorrow.

May 14, 2025
Our piles at Castle Rock are out. The weather cooperated and the crew was able to get them all lit by lunchtime yesterday and had them out cold by about the same time today.

With conditions for pile burning being as good as they are, we are going to take advantage and burn about 50 piles at Huckleberry Campground in Big Basin. These piles were made as part of a chainsaw training class last year. The current plan is to get all of these piles lit tomorrow and out by the end of the day on Friday. This will be one more small step towards reducing fuel in the old growth at Big Basin and eventually opening this campground again.

May 13, 2025
All has gone to plan for today's burning and we successfully lit our 20 piles around the Castle Rock Loop. We will be keeping an eye on them overnight and extinguishing completely tomorrow.  

May 12, 2025
With the recent rain comes an opportunity. We are going to mobilize to burn some of our Castle Rock piles. These are adjacent to the main climbing area. The plan is to ignite roughly 20 piles tomorrow, keep an eye on them overnight and extinguish them completely on Wednesday.  

May 6, 2025
We are planning to burn six large brush piles on Wednesday, 5/7, near the Wilder Ranch bluffs area. We will be burning in the morning and have everything mopped up by the end of the day. People around the Santa Cruz area, as well as those driving on Highway 1, may see smoke on the day of the burn. 

April 29, 2025
We did it! All 1,400 piles that were created by a contractor as part of a project we collaborated with the Santa Cruz Resource Conservation District on have been burned. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen. This is a big step towards implementing a larger understory burn in upper Nisene Marks that will improve forest health, reduce fuel load, and enhance biodiversity. 

April 25, 2025
Conditions improved into the evening and our night crew was able light another 42 piles. Grand total of 97 piles in 2 days of lighting. Crews spent the morning putting out whatever heat remained. All piles are currently now out. 

April 24, 2025
Today was a better day, we got 30 piles and will continue to light more through evening. Tomorrow we will be mopping up, they will be out by the end of the day.  

April 23, 2025
Today we had an ok day burning piles at Nisene Marks. We were able to burn 25 piles and will be back at it again tomorrow and mopping up on Friday. These are staffed 24/7 until they are out. 

April 22, 2025
Turns out the drippy wet day we were having in Felton does not represent what is happening in Castle Rock. We went up there this morning and at 8 when we arrived we were already out of prescription with low relative humidity.

We are shifting back to Nisene Marks to hopefully finish up the last of our 1400 piles this week. We will plan to be there Wed-Fri and have the piles out cold on Friday evening. We’ll be working on piles that are toward the western end of the park.

April 21, 2025
We are looking favorable for a burn day tomorrow up at Castle Rock SP to burn some of our piles near the climbing areas of Castle Rock Trail. Expect to see our smoke if you are in the area. 

April 17, 2025
We made some more progress today on our piles and are done with ignitions for the week. We will staff the piles overnight and put out anything that is still burning tomorrow. 

April 16, 2025
We managed to light roughly 40 piles today, moving ever closer to completing this project. The crew will be back up tomorrow to continue the work and make this road more useful for managing fire in the future. 

April 15, 2025
The weather is favorable for us to continue our work burning piles at Nisene Marks. We will begin lighting piles again tomorrow 4/16, starting just above the Sand Point Overlook. The expectation is that we will light on Wednesday and Thursday and then extinguish any smoldering piles on Friday.  

April 2, 2025
We successfully cut and processed some of our box elder snags down at the Henry Cowell lower lots with our air curtain burner. We’ll be continuing the project for the next two days. 

April 1, 2025
So we got a more rain last night than we planned for and that makes vehicle access into upper Nisene problematic on roads that wet. That, along with the high winds predicted later today mean that we are pivoting and not burning today.  We plan to burn Wed-Fri (4/2-4/4) at Henry Cowell to process all of the box elder snags that were killed by the Invasive Shot Hole Borer beetle. We’ll be using our air curtain burner to process a lot of material with minimal smoke. 

March 28, 2025
We are looking at returning to our burn pile project up at Nisene Marks next week starting on Tuesday (4/1) going through the weekend (4/6), weather permitting.  

March 23, 2025
We have been tending our Nisene burn piles for the last couple days and they are finally out. We will be back to burning more of them during the next wet weather window. 

March 21, 2025
Slower day today with 45 piles, the Relative Humidity was low so the redwood fuels wanted to burn. To be safe, we put a handline around all the piles.  We have folks on it overnight and plan to put the piles out tomorrow. 

March 20, 2025
Things are drying out and our crews, with the help of the Diablo District and the Central Coast PBA, made good progress. More than 80 piles will have been lit by the end of the day. We plan on one more day of lighting tomorrow and then are planning to put anything out that is still hot on Saturday, with a final check on Sunday to be sure we didn’t miss anything. 

March 19, 2025
Another day, another 50 piles. We will back at Nisene tomorrow to keep chipping away at them. 

March 18, 2025
Our piles at Nisene were hard to start after all of the recent rains, but our crew was able to get 56 more of them lit. They will monitor them tonight and be back tomorrow to light more.  

March 17, 2025
We are going to try again to finish our burn piles at Nisene Marks starting Tuesday of this week. We will be starting at the north end and working our way down the Aptos Creek Fire Road. Crews will be monitoring the piles 24/7 until they are cold. If all goes well this week will be our final push. 

March 14, 2025
The rain early this morning cooled our piles off so now we are busy cutting and rearranging the tree boles that didn’t burn back into a burn pile shape to allow the fire to thoroughly consume all the wood. 

March 13, 2025
We were joined by seven folks from the Amah Mutsun and in the rain and the hail we successfully ignited all eight of the piles we were hoping to burn today. Beyond the weather, the day was blessedly uneventful.  Now we wait for the piles to cook, then cool down. They’ll be staffed and tended to 24/7 until then. 

March 11, 2025
We are looking to burn eight piles out at Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve this week on Thursday and Friday. These piles were built in cooperation with the Amah Mutsun Land Trust in the Cultural Preserve on the inland side of Año Nuevo.  As always, all burning is dependent on weather conditions.

February 28, 2025
Despite the cloud cover and incoming rain the air on the plot remained too dry for us to safely burn. Instead, crews mopped up (put out), all of the piles that we lit in the previous three days. This is just another reminder (not that we needed one) of how challenging it is to burn, even pre-constructed piles.

We will keep staff on until dark tonight to be sure everything is out and then to make certain will send a patrol tomorrow to take a look before we head into what promises to be a rainy week. You will hear from us again when we get back to it once things dry out a bit.

February 27, 2025
We had the bodies, but we didn’t get the weather. We had help from Cal Fire and the Central Coast PBA today, but the weather didn’t cooperate. The relative humidity was outside of our prescription parameters, and we had to stop igniting after our first 16 piles were lit. But since we were up there, we made good use of folks’ time and spent the day preparing burn piles so that they will be easy and safe to light tomorrow when we are expecting somewhat cooler and wetter conditions.

After tomorrow we will switch from lighting piles to patrolling piles through the weekend. After that we plan to wait out the rain predicted for next week before we try and make what we hope will be a final push to finish this project.

February 26, 2025
It was a dry day, but we were able to safely burn another 50 piles which will be tended by our night crew. With additional help from the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association, we are hoping to put a significant dent in the remaining piles tomorrow. 

February 25, 2025
The crew was able to get about 60 piles lit today, which is 60 fewer piles on the ridge. This area is the most exposed and driest portion of the project. We have approval from the air district and favorable weather to continue our pile burning tomorrow. We are hoping to finish the ridge and then head down Aptos Creek Fire Road towards Sand Point Overlook. 

February 12, 2025
We didn’t get quite as much rain as predicted last night, so we will spend today monitoring piles and tidying them up before more significant rain begins tonight. After this next batch of rain we will be done burning for a while, as we wait for another opportunity to finish the piles on the ridge and light the piles on Aptos Creek Fire Road towards Sand Point Overlook. 

February 11, 2025
We had a long and very productive day burning piles. We ignited everything on Buzzard Lagoon Road, and finished almost all of the piles on Santa Rosalia Ridge.  

February 7, 2025
We had a good day despite the rain and got about 90 piles burned. We still have more to go and will likely make more progress early next week before Wednesday’s rain. We will have folks with the piles until they are out cold, which will likely be tomorrow evening. 

February 5, 2025
Our pile burn today at Henry Cowell went very smoothly due to the great prep work of the many volunteers who made the piles. We burned what turned out to be 82 piles and had lots of interested visitors. We will keep an eye on these piles until they are out then may head back up to Nisene Marks on Friday depending on the weather.

February 4, 2025
It is too wet to burn our piles at Nisene Marks following last night's rain, but we have some stellar volunteers who have created top-notch piles in the Redwood Grove Loop in Henry Cowell where we will be burning tomorrow. After that we should have another window to make some more progress at Nisene Marks this Friday. 

February 3, 2025
We took advantage of a break in the rain today and were able to burn another 50 or so of our piles up on Santa Rosalia Ridge. We will be taking a break tomorrow, 2/4, as the second of three atmospheric rivers passes through our region. Hopefully after that there will be enough of a break in the weather on Wednesday to burn some more piles before the third storm system makes its appearance and puts them out.  

Past Updates & Archive

2024 | 2023