Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership

The Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership (Lake Tahoe West) is developing a Landscape Restoration Strategy to guide restoration activities on 60,000 acres of Lake Tahoe's west shore. The goal is to increase the resilience of this landscape and to protect against prolonged drought, climate change, and extreme fire.

The Partnership includes scientists, land managers, multiple federal and state agencies, and organizations representing business, recreation, and conservation.

We aim to complete the Landscape Restoration Strategy in March 2019 and then begin planning forest and watershed restoration projects on the west shore.

This page provides an overview of the initiative, information on upcoming stakeholder meetings, and essential documents and background information.

For questions, please call or email the program manager, Sarah Di Vittorio, at 530-902-8281 or sdivittorio@nationalforests.org.

Key project resources

Project Description and Map (PDF)
Project FTP Site. Contains stakeholder meeting materials and essential project documents.
Lake Tahoe West Interactive Web Map
Landscape Resilience Assessment Overview (PDF). Summarizes key findings of the Assessment completed in December 2017.

What's new

In June 2018 Lake Tahoe West partners visited project sites around the Lake Tahoe basin to learn about techniques for forest and watershed restoration. Read this blog post about the field visit!

KEY MILESTONE: LANDSCAPE RESILIENCE ASSESSMENT

In December 2017, the Partnership completed Phase 1 of the Lake Tahoe West project: the Landscape Resilience Assessment. The Assessment uses the best available data to describe the current condition of the natural environment of the west side of the Lake Tahoe Basin and the resilience of those environmental characteristics, values, and ecosystem services to a variety of disturbances.

This overview (pdf) summarizes key findings of the Landscape Resilience Assessment.
Full document: Final Landscape Resilience Assessment (December 11, 2017) (pdf).

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The forests, lakes, and alpine peaks of Lake Tahoe’s west shore make it one of America’s iconic landscapes. The region as a whole is home to 65,000 residents and attracts over 6.4 million annual visitors. Yet persistent drought, climate change, overstocked forests, and a potential bark beetle epidemic threaten its ecology, economy, and culture.

The goal of Lake Tahoe West - an interagency initiative of the California Tahoe Conservancy, U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, California State Parks, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, and National Forest Foundation - is to restore the resilience of the west shore's forests, watersheds, recreational opportunities, and communities to such threats. The planning area includes 59,013 acres of federal, state, local, and private lands, from Emerald Bay to Squaw Valley.

Lake Tahoe West looks forward to testing new ideas and approaches that are transferable throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin and the Sierra Nevada.

STAKEHOLDER MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS

The January 8 and January 22 Stakeholder Committee meetings were cancelled due to the federal government shutdown. There will be a Joint Stakeholder Science Committee and Stakeholder Community meeting on February 12, 2019, from 9am to 4pm, location TBD.

We will soon post the meeting schedule for the rest of 2019.

Stakeholder meetings are open to the public throughout this multi-year effort. RSVP from public parties is requested (but not required) by three business days before the meeting. Please email eritzinger@nationalforests.org to RSVP.

Summer on the west shore. Photo by Dorian Fougeres.

Stakeholder Group Meeting synopses

Stakeholders and agency representatives smiling during their field visit on June 7, 2017. Photo by Mason Bindl.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This initiative is generously supported by two Proposition 1 planning grants from the California Tahoe Conservancy to the National Forest Foundation, agreement number CTA 15 018L, and a State Fire Assistance grant from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, grant award number 17-DG-11052012-145.

CONTACT

Sarah Di Vittorio, Ph.D. | sdivittorio@nationalforests.org | 530-902-8281

NFF Conservation Connect

Learn more about the NFF's other collaboration efforts here. For related collaborative efforts in California, see the Sierra Cascades All-Lands Enhancement (SCALE).

Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership