state parks

While nearly 70 of California’s state parks fought to escape closure from budget cuts, the crown jewel of the park system – Hearst Castle – waived $611,000 in private event fees over the last decade for select individuals and organizations, including the politically connected.

Hearst Castle, the lavish 165-room estate on a San Simeon hill overlooking the Pacific coast and Highway 1, has been the venue of choice for 125 events since 2002, ranging from weddings to fundraisers, birthday bashes to cocktail parties.

Most of the excused events were hosted by local partnerships, but politics also played a role in deciding who had to pay full price and who didn’t, said Nick Franco, superintendent for the state Department of Parks and Recreation's San Luis Obispo Coast District.

More than a fifth of the total – $124,450 – was waived for the birthday party of former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and a charity race led by Maria Shriver while she was California's first lady. The race benefited an international nonprofit, Best Buddies.

The waived fees stood to benefit not only Hearst Castle, but also the 11 other parks in the San Luis Obispo Coast District.

Donors in the South Bay, angry over state mismanagement of park funds, are demanding the return of hundreds of thousands of dollars they gave to keep Northern California’s largest state park operating.

The Coe Park Preservation Fund, based in Scotts Valley, donated $279,000 earlier this year to prevent the closure of rugged, 87,000-acre Henry W. Coe State Park, about 30 miles south of San Jose. 

“We’re going to ask for the return of the $279,000 back to the Coe Park Preservation Fund,” said Dan McCranie, treasurer of the group’s board. 

If the money is returned, the group plans to offer refunds to its donors.

The state, however, says it has no obligation to refund the money. “As it stands, there is no legal mechanism to actually return the money,” said Richard Stapler, spokesman for the state Natural Resources Agency, which oversees the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

But in an email, Stapler wrote that the agency does not rule out the possibility of a compromise. “We are very eager to speak with the Coe folks,” he said.

A little-known commission could be empowered to provide more oversight of the California Department of Parks and Recreation after an investigation revealed the department sat on a multimillion-dollar budget surplus for years.

This week, state Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, plans to introduce legislation giving the State Park and Recreation Commission new authority.

"The commission is the citizens' oversight committee for the parks," said Evans in a phone interview. “I want to make it a commission that actually has some teeth to it."

While some members of the commission support Evans' plan, another member, Maurice Johannessen, thinks that it has all the authority it needs.

"The commission is an oversight body that can go in and find anything that they want," said Johannessen, who is also a former state senator. "If I wanted to review a budget, then I would ask for it."

The commission once ran the state parks system, according to Joseph Engbeck, an environmental historian who is the author of “State Parks of California from 1864 to the Present.”

“Little by little, over the years, the legislator and the governor moved power away from the commission,” Engbeck said. “To the point where all the commission can really do today is to approve general plans and new names for parks.”

For months, the city of Benicia has been working with the California state parks department on an agreement to keep the Benicia State Recreation Area open.

The park was one of 70 parks around the state slated to close after the state cut $22 million from the parks department budget last year.

But two weeks ago, an investigation revealed the department has been sitting on a $54 million surplus for several years. The director of the agency, Ruth Coleman, quickly resigned, and its chief deputy director, Michael Harris, was fired. The agency's chief counsel, Ann Malcolm, also left.

“Now, we don’t know who is going to sign (the agreement),” said Mario Giuliani, economic development manager for the city.

Across the state, municipalities like Benicia and nonprofits like the Benicia State Parks Association, which are working to sign agreements with the parks department to keep parks open, don't know what will happen to those efforts.

“Up in the air,” is how Bob Berman, board vice president of the Benicia State Parks Association, described the status of the Benicia agreements. 

Toxic chemicals used to rid rodents from illicit marijuana gardens in the Sierra Nevada range and elsewhere in California may have inadvertently poisoned dozens of vulnerable weasel-like mammals called fishers, according to a new study released today.

Biologists from UC Davis, the nonprofit Integral Ecology Research Center, and state and federal land agencies found that nearly 80 percent of a sample size of fishers found dead in the wild were exposed directly or indirectly to anticoagulant rodenticides – rat poison. They point to illegal marijuana cultivation as a likely culprit for the introduction of the chemicals to remote areas where the animals live.

Fishers are members of the weasel family and formerly ranged across the northern forests of North America. But logging and fur trappers lured by their once-valuable pelts drove the fishers' numbers down, wiping them out in some parts of the United States. The sample group of the rare animals, which could be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, were found over a five-year period ending in 2011 in Northern California and in the southern Sierra Nevada range. Some of the dead animals were found in remote wilderness areas with no roads or campground access.

Less than a week before Candlestick Point State Recreation Area is slated to close, no deep-pocketed savior has emerged to keep open the waterfront park, which is in one of San Francisco's poorest neighborhoods.

Unlike Candlestick Point, most of the other 16 state parks in the Bay Area scheduled to close in July will remain open, at least temporarily.

It's still possible that the city of San Francisco or the developer Lennar, which has committed $50 million to the park in a development deal over the next couple of decades, will find a way to keep Candlestick Point open. But no deal has been struck yet. 

“We haven’t had anybody step up to the plate that has offered to either enter into a donor agreement or an operating agreement thus far,” said Danita Rodriguez, acting district superintendent for the Diablo Vista District of California State Parks. The state spent about half a million dollars on the park in fiscal year 2010-2011, she said. 

What closing Candlestick Point will actually mean remains uncertain, since the park has several points of entry. Even rangers who work there have yet to receive guidance from the state about shutting it down. "I have not seen the plans for what is actually going to happen," said Ann Meneguzzi, supervising ranger for the park. "I don't know." 

Frank Quan's family has lived at China Camp, catching and selling shrimp, since the 1890s. He's the last remaining resident of a Chinese fishing village that once thrived on San Pablo Bay. Now the state is closing China Camp State Park along with dozens of other parks because of budget cuts. What will happen to Frank?

Frank Quan is 85 years old, and he has lived nearly his entire life in one place – a tiny wooden shack perched on the shore of San Pablo Bay.

But by next summer, Quan could be forced to move: His house is in a state park slated for closure.

In an unusual arrangement with the state, Quan is the sole resident of China Camp State Park, one of 70 parks the state plans to close amid a $22 million budget cut. He is the third generation in his family to live here, the last remaining relic of Chinese shrimp-fishing villages that once dotted California’s bay shores.

Unless state officials find a way to save it, China Camp could be gone, too.

“History is there on paper,” said Quan, who has heavy eyes, a shuffle in his walk and gravel in his voice. “But this is the last camp of 26 where there was enough left to save. If they close it down, it’d be destroyed.”

Quan and park supporters worry China Camp, if shuttered, would fall victim to vandalism, trespassing and other illegal activity. The village, much of which has been restored with state dollars, would collapse into disrepair unless preserved. The state estimates it will cost $150,000 annually to protect and preserve China Camp while closed.

Mono Lake is the second-largest lake in California – a gorgeous, otherworldly expanse of aquamarine saltwater in the high desert east of Yosemite National Park.

Its very existence is a modern environmental success story. As late as 1984, the lake was condemned to become a 65-square-mile salt flat, as the city of Los Angeles had dammed its tributary streams and diverted the water into the LA aqueduct.

It was saved, in dramatic fashion, by an unlikely coalition of trout fishermen, environmentalists and water-rights lawyers. Today, it’s recovering from 50 years of abuse.

But now, as part of a round of budget cuts, Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered the closure of the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, the state park established as part of the effort to save the lake.

It’s one of 70 state parks [PDF] being shuttered in hopes of saving $22 million. 

Mono Lake's boosters say closing the park won‘t save the state a dime. But they say it will derail volunteer programs that have allowed the park to operate for years at minimal cost to the state.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Geoff McQuilkin, executive director of the Mono Lake Committee, the organization founded in the 1970s to save Mono Lake.