The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously on March 14 to allow Los Padres National Forest to prohibit camping and campfires at San Carpoforo Creek Beach—the only beach in Big Sur where people could camp for free—for at least two years.
It will stay open and accessible for day use activities.
“The purpose … is to allow the Forest Service to reset and improve the existing conditions at the beach,” commission Senior Environmental Scientist Tom Luster said during the meeting. “The beach has suffered in recent years.”
While the beach at the northern end of SLO County was once a relatively unknown spot along Highway 1, Luster said that’s changed. Through social media posts highlighting the beach’s beauty and free camping, the COVID-19 pandemic, and closures of Highway 1 due to landslides, the number of visitors at San Carpoforo has increased.
From October 2022 to October 2023, approximately 60 warnings and 45 citations were issued for “violations related to campfires, trespass, improper sanitation, and others,” according to a letter shared with the Coastal Commission from Los Padres’ Monterey District’s law enforcement officer. The piece managed by Los Padres runs through the middle of the beach, while State Parks owns a portion of it to the south and private landowners own portions to the north.
San Carpoforo is relatively undeveloped, with a small parking area along Highway 1 and an entrance that takes visitors down a trail to the beach. There are no bathrooms, no trash collection, no signs delineating sensitive habitat or species, no formally marked camping spaces or fire rings, and little staffing, Luster said.
Cambria resident Tina Dickason spoke during the public comment, saying she supported the temporary closure for “however long it takes to get it right.”
“The situation on the beach has reached an alarming state. Public safety and species are threatened by campfires on the beach,” she said.
Mandy Sackett with the Surfrider Foundation told the commission that her nonprofit advocates for protection of public access to the coast, and a lack of low-cost overnight accommodations can be a key barrier to that access.
“Overnight accommodations shouldn’t come at whatever cost to the coast … we recognize that,” she said, adding that San Carpoforo is a special place. “With the recent rise in popularity, we do think that a more careful management plan is key.”
The commission did place some conditions on the impending closure, including that the Forest Service submit baseline maps of sensitive species and habitats at the beach, implement measures for Western snowy plover protection, submit regular reports to the commission on the status of the visitor use management program process, and invite tribal participation. The commission specified that the program should include the goal of “no net loss of coastal camping opportunities,” and if the Forest Service wanted to extend the ban beyond two years, it would need to go back to the commission.
Ensuring the existence of low- or no-cost overnight accommodations like camping is a Coastal Commission objective, something commissioners brought up before voting in favor of allowing the closure.
“We should expect that this demand will continue for low-cost visitor serving accommodations,” Commissioner Ann Notthoff said. “There’s a lot of resource impacts that’s going on right now, but we also have to balance that with the need for public access.”
Monterey District Ranger Fin Eifert told New Times that it’s not his intention to close access to public lands. However, he added that when there’s a threat to human health, safety risks, and resource issues, it’s time to take a break.
He anticipated that Los Padres would implement the ban, which will also prohibit off-leash dogs, in mid-April.
Before Eifert became the district ranger, he was the district’s resource officer and received a lot of emails and comments about the trash, human waste, trespassing, and fire risk issues at San Carpoforo. In 2021, he helped craft an order to temporarily ban camping and campfires, but the commission put a stop to it at the time.
Since then, he said, the district has put a lot of work into increasing staffing and laying the groundwork to craft a visitor use management program for the Big Sur coast. The San Carpoforo camping ban and revamp of amenities is just one part of it. It includes finding potential places to increase public access to the coast and to add bathrooms and other visitor-serving uses along Highway 1.
“The ruling from the commission was no net loss [of camping], but it doesn’t have to be specifically at San Carpoforo,” Eifert said. “We will follow through with the charge that they’ve given us, … and it’s my intention to actually create some surplus.” Δ
This article appears in Spring Arts Annual 2024.
