Camp Cretaceous was a planned attraction at the Jurassic World theme park operated by International Genetic Technologies under Masrani Global Corporation. It was intended to be a youth adventure camp with sessions taking place during the American summer and winter holidays, allowing children and teenagers the opportunity to experience behind-the-scenes tours of the park and its operations. Camp Cretaceous was located in the northern region of Isla Nublar, in a restricted area where tourists were not normally allowed to go; campers would witness (under controlled conditions) aspects of the park that were still in development including the field genetics laboratory and Herd M grazing grounds. Normal park activities, such as kayaking and rock climbing, were also planned.
The camp was fully constructed by December of 2015 and was scheduled to go through a trial run before becoming fully operational. When the camp opened to the wider public, it would have a capacity of 500 youths and would employ 150 counselors; for the trial run, six attendees and two counselors were present. The trial run began on December 19. On its fourth day, Jurassic World experienced a major security incident which resulted in the park being shut down indefinitely. During the incident, the camp attendees were separated from park staff. Despite attempts to rescue them, the campers were declared missing, presumed dead on December 22 and the island was evacuated. Although the campers had actually survived the incident, they were never rescued, and sheltered in Camp Cretaceous until they were able to leave the island on their own in June 2016.
Name
The name of the attraction, “Camp Cretaceous,” references the third geological time period in the Mesozoic era. This parallels the park’s name; the Jurassic is the second geological time period in the Mesozoic era. The Cretaceous was probably selected to give the camp’s name an alliterative effect.
Location
Camp Cretaceous was situated in the central northern region of Isla Nublar, to the east of Mount Sibo and northwest of the Jungle River. It was built into an artificial forest of live redwood trees grown apparently for that purpose in a wooded area of the island where the environmental conditions were conducive to redwood growth. Camp Cretaceous encompassed not only the campground, but also a nearby pair of observation towers connected across a forest clearing by a zipline. The taller tower was located to the north, with the smaller one in the south. Both of these were located a short distance to the west from the campground.
Description
The main campsite of Camp Cretaceous was built into a small redwood forest, which was probably introduced to Isla Nublar explicitly for that purpose. Coast redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) measuring over three hundred feet in height and nearly thirty feet in diameter were used as the bases for elevated platforms used for housing, recreation, and observation of Isla Nublar’s natural environment. The platforms were combination wood and metal, built to appear a seamless combination of traditional naturalistic construction and the modern advanced technology that otherwise characterized Jurassic World. Aesthetically, the camp differed from the main park in this respect, lacking the holograms and touchscreens that Jurassic World was largely known for; it also had a distinctly different color scheme, featuring warm reds and woody browns and yellows rather than the silver-and-blue colors prevalent in the main park. This gave Camp Cretaceous an aesthetic similar to that of the old Jurassic Park attractions, which were abandoned in 1993 before seeing any public visitors.
There were ten or eleven elevated platforms, built with rings around the living tree trunks and covered, enclosed spaces for rows of bunks. All together, the camp was planned to have capacity for five hundred campers when it was fully operational, so there were probably intended to be more bungalows eventually. Access to the bungalows was via an elevator built directly into the bark and outer wood of the largest tree, located in a central part of the campground; from here, suspended walkways in the understory spanned from one tree-based platform to the next. In the platform with the elevator, there were no bunks, as this platform instead held the recreation room. Here there were coin-operated snack machines, water coolers, table tennis, art supplies, and a small rock climbing wall. Dinosaur-themed decorations were placed around the room.
The camp was entered from the south by means of a dirt road winding through the undeveloped land of northern Isla Nublar, which entered the campsite through a set of large wooden gates flanked by three pairs of gas-fueled torches in the stone frames. These resembled the entrance gates used in both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, though they bore the Camp Cretaceous logo.
Water to the campsite came from a stream which flowed downhill from the mountains of the north, including Mount Sibo; power was probably derived from the park’s grid and therefore originated from geothermal energy at Mount Sibo as well. A small bridge crossed the stream where it entered camp. In the center of the campsite, there was a large decorative red-and-black Jurassic World logo made from colored stones. This was able to be used as a giant fire pit. Smaller campfires could be made around camp as well, including designated areas in the elevated platforms that held the bungalows.
Located to the southwest of the campsite was the Observation Tower, which overlooked a clearing in the forest through which Herd M migrated twice a day. In the morning, the dinosaurs (the herd included Brachiosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and Sinoceratops) passed through on their way from the overnight enclosures to their feeding grounds, and in the evening they would be herded back for the night. From the taller north tower, campers could view the herd easily; the south tower was located in woodland and was much shorter, serving instead as a landing platform for a zipline. Riders would pass over the clearing, giving them the opportunity to see the dinosaurs from angles that would otherwise be impossible; the zipline harnesses had built-in electronic brakes which would engage when the line leveled out, acting as a safety system alternative to the more standard brake block. An LED light would glow green when the harness was free to move, and turn red when the brakes were engaged, making it easy for staff to tell at a glance whether the harness was set to operate. From the south tower the now-unoccupied harnesses could be reeled back up via the retrieve rope.
Camp Cretaceous operating hours were planned to span about the same time as the normal park’s, with a curfew at 8:00pm and lights out at 9:00pm.
During the 2015 incident, Camp Cretaceous sustained heavy damage. The taller of the two Observation Tower platforms was torn down by the Indominus rex, snapping the cable; the lower tower was left untouched. Shortly after, the dinosaur clashed with InGen park rangers at the campsite, destroying the base of the access elevator. This rendered the entirety of the elevated structure inaccessible, and destabilized the central platform; it fell apart without its supports. On December 24, the survivors from Camp Cretaceous returned to the abandoned campsite and began to construct themselves a makeshift fortress using debris from the collapsed platforms and other park materials. The stream was rerouted to provide a larger source of fresh water, and over the course of the next month or two, Camp Cretaceous was re-imagined and rebuilt.
The new structure was elevated roughly fifteen feet above the ground, with ladders for access; the campers utilized bamboo to construct these. Private sleeping areas, a dining area and meeting place with a blackboard, and storage spaces were walled off using salvaged materials. Using pipes and tubing recovered from around the park, the campers built a manually-operated shower, though they lacked a way to sufficiently heat the water. The whole structure was protected by a roof also built from debris, and a slide was attached to the side to allow for a quick exit if necessary (and for enjoyment). During the summer, the fort’s defenses were shored up using pieces of fence and grating, which were briefly electrified using a car battery. After June 2016, the campers left Isla Nublar for good, and the campsite fell into disarray once more. It was most likely destroyed in the eruption of Mount Sibo twenty-four months later.
History
2015: Construction and trial run
Jurassic World’s profits began slowing within a few years of its opening day in 2005; by 2008, Masrani Global’s Board of Directors were concerned that the park might not be viable in the long term, and several of InGen’s higher-ranking employees agreed. CEO Simon Masrani and the park’s Operations Manager Claire Dearing worked with the Board to come up with new ways to ensure the park income levels remained consistent with the operating costs, which grew ever higher as the park’s dinosaur population increased. While InGen’s genetics department was tasked with inventing new biological assets, Masrani and Dearing also drafted plans for an adventure camp that children and teenagers could attend during vacation. This would create an entirely new form of attraction at Jurassic World by promising behind-the-scenes looks at the park’s scientific operations, including looks at animal assets that were not yet available to the public and exclusive tours of Dr. Henry Wu‘s laboratory facilities.
The camp was built in the northern part of Isla Nublar, away from the park itself and in a region of the island that was off-limits to normal tourists. Camp staff would ensure that park security was still maintained, and that campers would only see what InGen approved for them. Company secrets would be protected. Still, there were questions about how exactly the camp would operate, and a trial run was planned. Dearing hired a British camp counselor named Roxie to head the program, and Roxie was given an assistant named David. These two counselors would supervise six campers chosen for the trial run. When the camp became fully operational, there would be a team of 150 counselors and a maximum capacity of five hundred campers.
Choosing the six lucky campers was another matter. Masrani had publicity to consider, but also corporate political factors. Invitations were extended to several of the company’s high-ranking employees and partners, giving them the opportunity to sign their children up for the trial run. Simon Masrani’s trusted friend and Jurassic World investor, Daniel Kon, signed up his son Kenji; meanwhile one of the company’s board members signed up her son Ben Pincus. A third slot was given to a youth track-and-field athlete, Yasmina Fadoula, whose career was sponsored by the Jurassic World brand.
These three campers were all chosen for largely political reasons, but they could still provide publicity through the influence of their families and company connections. But to reach the camp’s target audience directly, Masrani needed someone to help speak to young people in their own language. For this, he identified a prime candidate in Brooklynn, a thirteen-year-old vlogger known for her hit series “Brooklynn Unboxes the World.” Through her family’s wealth and corporate sponsorships, she had traveled around the world and shared its incredible sights with her audience. Brooklynn’s video style let the settings of her adventures tell the story; this would make her a great way to show Camp Cretaceous right to its target demographic. Brooklynn was invited to fill a fourth slot in Camp Cretaceous’s trial run, and she accepted it. She alone was allowed to keep a personal phone, so that she could record videos of her camp experience for her vlog.
A fifth slot was filled by Samantha Gutierrez, whose family’s cattle ranch supplied Jurassic World with most of its beef. The selection of Sammy Gutierrez was a stranger affair than the other campers; it is uncertain how exactly she was proposed as a candidate to Masrani, but the corporate spy Kash Langford (an administrator at Mantah Corp) was involved. The Gutierrez family refused Langford’s offer to monetarily reward them for Sammy’s involvement, but Sammy privately contacted Langford afterward and accepted the offer. Sammy was therefore accepted into Camp Cretaceous at the last minute, her family only discovering this after she had already boarded the ferry to Isla Nublar. She was tasked by Langford with stealing InGen trade secrets using her behind-the-scenes access.
Five of the six slots at the trial run were hand-selected based on corporate politics. Simon Masrani had wanted the park to be for everyone in the world, following in the footsteps of his predecessor and mentor John Hammond; he hoped a similar future for Camp Cretaceous. He saved the sixth available slot in the trial run for someone normal, not politically or financially connected to InGen or Masrani Global. To choose this winner, he engineered a competition. A video game was released in late 2015, the prize for the first winner being the sixth Camp Cretaceous position. Winning the game required more than just skill: it would take background knowledge about Jurassic World’s history as well as current paleontological science. The first person to win the game was Darius Bowman, a boy thrilled by the idea of visiting Jurassic World and deeply enamored with dinosaurs. He was exactly what Simon Masrani had hoped for.
The campers arrived to the island on December 19, 2015 and were driven by Roxie and Dave to the campsite. En route, they encountered an escaped Compsognathus, which park rangers returned to its pen. The campers settled into camp, though Darius was disappointed that their encounter with the dinosaur had been so brief; fortunately for him they still had more plans for that evening. The campers were brought to the Observation Tower, where they witnessed Herd M being led by the park rangers to the overnight enclosures. Among the dinosaurs were Sinoceratops, which had not yet been revealed to the public. They ended the experience by using the zipline to cross the clearing, seeing the dinosaurs from all manner of angles.
During the night of December 19, Darius tried to sneak out to see the compy pen, and was found out by Kenji and Brooklynn; rather than turn him in, they accompanied him. The three were returned to camp after trespassing into the raptor paddock by mistake, where they were rescued by park rangers aided by Roxie and Dave. Rather than face expulsion from the island on December 20, Darius and Kenji were assigned to packaging dinosaur manure; Brooklynn was let off with a warning. After the day’s experiences (and long showers on the part of Darius and Kenji), the campers met around a campfire that night where Darius entertained them with storytelling. They were interrupted by the arrival of a thunderstorm, which forced them inside. By this time, Sammy had begun relaying InGen trade secrets to Mantah Corp, meeting a remotely-controlled drone at a drop point near the campsite.
On December 21, the weather had still not cleared, but the campers were brought out into the grazing grounds to travel alongside Herd M using gyrospheres. Inclement weather put them at risk, and after a series of mishaps, they were recollected by the counselors and brought back to camp. While editing video from the day’s events, Brooklynn noticed Sammy surreptitiously taking a skin punch biopsy from a Sinoceratops, and began to suspect that her fellow camper was acting on someone else’s behalf. She did not get a chance to confront Sammy that night, but Sammy took the chance to take Brooklynn’s phone at the earliest opportunity. Since Brooklynn was the only one with a phone at camp, everyone had taken turns using it, so Sammy was not an obvious suspect to anyone other than Brooklynn.
December 22 would have seen the addition of two additional campers, Claire Dearing’s nephews Zach and Gray Mitchell, to the trial run. However, Roxie recommended not incorporating them since the camp had experienced a few security concerns over the past three days. Dearing was having an extremely busy day with Simon Masrani visiting Isla Nublar and a corporate partnership proposal over the upcoming Indominus rex attraction (which was still classified information), so Roxie could not reach her; she and Dave went into the park for a few hours, leaving the campers to while away the time in the bungalows. While they waited for the counselors to return, they heard the vocalization of an unfamiliar dinosaur and went to the Observation Tower to investigate. In doing so, they narrowly missed the warning transmitted by park rangers of a Code 19 in progress, an asset out of containment.
At the tower, Brooklynn picked the lock and allowed everyone to the top, where they witnessed a Brachiosaurus being ambushed by an unseen giant predator. Park rangers attempted to warn the campers down, but were then also attacked by the predator, the Indominus rex, which was the cause of the Code 19 issued minutes before. Both of the two park rangers were killed before the campers’ eyes. To escape as the genetically-engineered animal began destabilizing the south tower, the campers used the zipline. Ben Pincus was the first across, but the tipping tower caused the line to level, so the automatic brake engaged. This stopped the campers’ escape, and to force them back into motion, Darius and Yaz had to cooperatively ram their companions. Before the campers could make it to the south tower, though, the Indominus brought down the north tower and caused the line to snap. All of the campers were dropped into the jungle, where the phone Sammy had stolen from Brooklynn was shattered irreparably. They were forced to trek back to the campground on foot, wary that the Indominus could attack at any moment.
However, the Indominus had already come and gone from the campground. There, it engaged in a pitched battle against Jurassic World park rangers who had gone to rescue the campers, causing at least one death. During the fight, the dinosaur caused structural damage to the campground’s main elevator up to the bungalows, rendering the lift inoperable and preventing all access to the elevated platforms. The dinosaur had already headed south by the time the campers arrived, discovering the campsite destroyed and unsafe. After some debate, they decided to make for the main park where they could find help. Camp Cretaceous was left behind in tatters.
2015-2016: Use by stranded campers
Two days after the campsite was damaged by the Indominus, the survivors of Camp Cretaceous returned. They had failed to reach Ferry Landing in time, and since they were in the maintenance tunnels when an infrared scan of the island was performed, they were missed. The exception to this was Ben Pincus, who had become separated from the others (but had apparently fallen into an infrared scanner blind spot). Presumed dead and left behind, the campers began collecting debris from Camp Cretaceous and surrounding facilities and started building themselves a new structure to survive in. The going was slow at first, with the campers still learning how to work with one another, but by the end of December 24 they were well underway. Yaz planned out the structure, and together they built it.
Assembling their new home took a period of six to eight weeks, but by this time the campers were having a hard time keeping track of precisely how many days had passed. In the meantime, survival became routine. They learned how to avoid the island’s dangers and recover the supplies they needed to not just get by, but actually become comfortable. Their makeshift fortress did not have all the comforts of home, but it was as close as the abandoned park could offer. Between the five of them, they could problem-solve well enough to overcome most of the obstacles facing them. They even found a way to add music back into their life, even if it was Dave’s personal attempt at an original mixtape.
In February, the campers all left home upon seeing another campfire some distance to the west. This led them to become entangled with an illegal intrusion onto Isla Nublar: two big-game hunters, Mitchell and Tiffany, as well as their guide Hap, who had landed on the island to hunt its rare animal life. When they finally returned home, they had lost a major opportunity to leave Isla Nublar by foiling the hunters’ plans, but they had gained something: Ben had found them again, and his Ankylosaurus companion Bumpy had grown into an adolescent. Five survivors became seven, Ben and Bumpy joining their number again.
Over the course of the next few months, the campers made several attempts to escape Isla Nublar using materials and technology they salvaged from around the abandoned park. Unfortunately, with all communications cut off and the island under United Nations quarantine protocol, they could not reach help; all the park’s ferries had been used to evacuate, and no other seaworthy craft remained. Efforts to escape via aircraft also failed. Every time the campers made an evacuation attempt, they were ultimately forced to regroup at Camp Cretaceous once more, painfully keeping track of each plan they tried. The campsite was the closest thing to home they could get on Isla Nublar, but it was becoming harder with each failed escape plan to keep hope alive.
In June, the campers discovered the hunters’ yacht stuck on rocks off the island’s western coast, managing to recover it, but were prevented from escaping due to a tropical storm. Another threat loomed: as the park’s infrastructure deteriorated, things that were meant to stay contained were unleashed onto the island. One of Dr. Wu’s earliest attempts at genetic hybridization, the Scorpios rex specimen E750, was one of these. To defend themselves, the campers fortified their shelter with fencing and grating pieces, using a car battery to electrify their fence. This held off E750 at first, but the dinosaur soon found a way in by clambering up a redwood. It attacked the campers, poisoning Sammy before being drawn away by a challenge from its offspring. Sammy was comforted by Brooklynn and Kenji while Yaz made a run for medicine; Darius and Ben distracted the threatening Scorpios. By cooperating once again, the campers saved Sammy’s life.
They made another escape attempt, killing both of the Scorpios in the process, but were turned back one final time by the unexpected arrival of Dr. Henry Wu and an accompanying mercenary team doing reconnaissance and recovery. Camp Cretaceous served as a staging ground one last time as the campers planned their moves against Dr. Wu, who they now considered a threat to global security due to the dangerous nature of his research. Brooklynn was held against her will by Dr. Wu and his security detail; the others hatched a plan to save her and prevent Dr. Wu from recovering valuable research materials. Kenji considered the plan too risky, as they were allowing Brooklynn to remain in danger longer so that they could hinder Dr. Wu’s work. Darius, who Brooklynn had entrusted with stopping Dr. Wu, intended to copy Wu’s research data onto one of Sammy’s flash drives before deleting it off his laptop; Kenji was unwilling to wait until this process was complete and instead took the laptop to trade for Brooklynn’s safety. Though the plan quickly went awry, they still managed to succeed at both rescuing Brooklynn and destroying the laptop.
One last time, the campers returned to the campsite to collect the last few things they needed. From there, they left for the docks, taking the yacht around the island’s coastline and heading east toward Costa Rica. Camp Cretaceous was now empty for good, used only by the animal life that sought shelter from the wild among its decaying remains.
2016-2018: Abandonment and destruction
For two years, Camp Cretaceous lay unused, gradually falling into disarray. Bumpy sometimes slept there, leaving the ankylosaur herds for the fond memories of life with Ben and the other campers. Other animals used the camp every now and then, but the food and other useful resources had mostly been removed. It still offered water and shelter, but as time went on, the forest retook more and more of it.
Conditions on Isla Nublar began to deteriorate in a bigger way before long. Mount Sibo, having been dormant for hundreds of years, was waking up. Plants in the north became coated by ashfall, and poisonous gases seeped into the water; algal blooms and fish die-offs resulted. Camp Cretaceous, situated dangerously close to the volcanic mountain, was probably hit hard by these effects. Its plants became contaminated, its water poisoned and the small animal life killed or driven away. Then, finally, on June 23, 2018, the volcano experienced a catastrophic eruption. Eastern Isla Nublar was especially affected by gas explosions, lava eruptions, volcanic bombs, and searing-hot clouds of toxic fumes and ash. The makeshift structure that was left of Camp Cretaceous would stand little chance against such a natural disaster. Not only this, but the redwoods and any part of the camp that remained in their branches were certainly destroyed. The Observation Tower, too, was likely felled by the eruption. Little to nothing of Camp Cretaceous probably remains today.
Cultural Significance
To Simon Masrani, Camp Cretaceous represented one of his major dreams at Jurassic World: to get kids and teenagers interested in science and technology, not just for education and career purposes, but to inspire them to envision the possibilities of the future based on knowledge from the past. This represented the real heart of the park, and this may be why Camp Cretaceous had an aesthetic that harked back to the old days of Jurassic Park rather than the steel-blue touchscreen theme that dominated Jurassic World. Masrani’s desire to foster a sense of wonder and inspiration in youths was also the reason the sixth slot in the camp’s trial run, the one reserved for a lucky winner, was filled via competition rather than random lottery. By choosing the winner through a game that required knowledge of both Jurassic World’s history and real paleontological science, Masrani ensured that at least one of the first campers was someone who could truly appreciate what the park had to offer. No amount of wealth or social connections could replace the sense of awe and wonder one experienced at seeing a living creature brought back from millions of years in the past, and it was imperative to Simon Masrani that the camp properly represented that.
Unfortunately, Camp Cretaceous never met its opening day. The trial run took place fatefully close to the incident in 2015 that permanently closed Jurassic World, and the camp suffered serious damage during the incident. Even before that, some serious safety concerns about the camp were being raised by its first two counselors. Not every aspect of camp operation had been anticipated and prepared for, and even more wild cards were cropping up behind the scenes: one of the campers, Sammy Gutierrez, was bribed into acting as a corporate spy for one of Masrani Global’s rivals. This was the kind of unpredictability that had always spelled trouble for InGen operations, and Camp Cretaceous was sadly no exception to the chaos that plagued the company.
The world knew about Camp Cretaceous thanks to InGen’s publicity efforts, collaborating with a teenage vlogger named Brooklynn to share the trial run with her followers (who, naturally, were the camp’s target audience). This meant that the disappearance of the six youths was one of a great many stains on InGen’s reputation after the incident that it would never be able to hide. Camp Cretaceous, in a way, became quite the microcosm for all of Jurassic World’s flaws, from its improper contingency planning to the casual lack of safeguards in case of a major disaster. The camp was supposed to be entirely safe and prepared, but when a real crisis struck, InGen struggled to keep things under control and ultimately failed altogether.
Meanwhile, the six campers had actually survived the incident but were presumed dead by InGen and the world at large. Camp Cretaceous, in its destroyed state, was a painful reminder of that fact. Just as the comfortable bungalows in the trees were out of reach with the elevator damaged, so was the familiarity of the world off Isla Nublar inaccessible to them now. But, as they vowed to survive through cooperation, they rebuilt some semblance of home on the island. Debris from the camp and surrounding facilities was used to construct a makeshift fort, defensible and safe, with whatever forms of comfort they could manage. Building the fort was an act of defiance against the hostile natural world they were now stranded in, a symbol of resilience in the face of hardship. As building it was a collaborative effort, the fort also came to symbolize the bond the campers shared, a bond formed through necessity but maintained by determination.
Camp Cretaceous started out as a way to further Jurassic World’s goal of inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs, encouraging kids to dream and showing them the wonders they could achieve. Although it suffered from the same flaws as all of Jurassic World, it did accomplish some aspect of this goal: the six teenagers who attended camp did discover what they were capable of when they put their minds to a task. The lessons they learned were harsher and more perilous than anything Simon Masrani had ever wanted, but the lessons were learned nonetheless. Each of the six campers-turned-survivors left Isla Nublar with a newfound sense of maturity beyond their years, innovative problem-solving, and moral steadfastness. Despite all the trials they suffered, they ultimately got from Camp Cretaceous everything they were meant to.
Ecological Significance
The human aspect of Camp Cretaceous is its most famous element, but it has also played a notable role as a part of Isla Nublar’s ecosystem. Firstly, it was built in an artificial redwood biome: this was one of two such human-built forests on the island, the other of which was contained within T. rex Kingdom. Coast redwoods are naturally native to a fairly limited range of the Pacific Northwest, but have been cultivated in the Gulf of Fernandez. Since there is no evidence of these trees on Isla Nublar prior to the camp’s construction, and adult-sized trees would have been there for many decades if they grew naturally, they were probably engineered by InGen to grow rapidly. This would be an enormously water-intensive operation and also require massive amounts of nutrients, which InGen could have sourced from the manure of its herbivorous dinosaur population. Growing the redwoods would also mean eliminating a region of Isla Nublar’s natural forest environment, displacing local animals and plants while allowing for new ones to establish. Some animals, such as chorus frogs and fireflies, continued to thrive in the Camp Cretaceous redwood forest.
Camp Cretaceous became an even more important part of the Isla Nublar ecosystem after the park was closed. It was damaged by the Indominus rex attack, beginning the slow process through which nature reclaimed the area. Dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus were soon sighted there; other species, including Sinoceratops and Compsognathus, eventually appeared in the nearby areas as well. Compies in particular sheltered in the campsite after the survivors of the incident built it up into a fortress; they were treated as pests, but could avoid more dangerous predators by hiding among the rubble and the campers’ fortifications. The natural water source was rerouted and turned into a small watering hole, which various animals and plants would benefit from just as much as the stranded campers.
For the most part, bigger carnivores avoided the campsite in favor of other regions of the island. Herbivorous animals that favored lower-growing plant life could flourish here, with herds of Ankylosaurus and Parasaurolophus living in the woodland around the campsite. The redwoods kept most medium-height trees from establishing, so only the tallest herbivores such as Brachiosaurus could browse in the area. During the summer of 2016, the ecology of the island was disrupted by the growing Scorpios rex population; the older of the two actually breached the defenses at Camp Cretaceous, being the only dinosaur to do so. The campers staying at the site succeeded in killing both of the Scorpios before further population growth could occur, sparing Isla Nublar from further ecological devastation. In this way, the presence of the campground and its human inhabitants was beneficial to the whole island.
After June 2016, the campers finally were able to leave Isla Nublar altogether and Camp Cretaceous was no longer maintained. It fell into disarray, with Bumpy being the only animal to use it regularly any longer. Most of the resources were removed by the campers; now, only the redwoods and the stream remained to draw wildlife in. The campground gradually was overtaken by nature until the eruption of Mount Sibo in June 2018. With the campsite in the island’s northern forests to the east of Mount Sibo, it was right in the path of the eruption, and was probably destroyed. This ended its role in the bizarre ecology of Isla Nublar.
