It’s All One, Big Tahoe
On a clear day, and from the right vantage point, you can see all of Lake Tahoe in one frame. Before your eyes are peaks, trees, boats, homes, and, if you squint hard enough, people. Most of all, you’ll notice an astonishingly large body of water, connected to everything else in sight. That’s how we should all think about Tahoe — as a whole, with myriad interlinking parts, but essentially as one thing, nonetheless. That’s how we need to treat it, too, if we hope to keep Tahoe blue.
Modern people, in our infinite wisdom, have taken the Lake Tahoe Basin that was — and is — so wisely stewarded by the Waší-šiw (Washoe people) for millennia and divided it up into dozens of often overlapping puzzle pieces, representing the different spheres of influence for governments, agencies, districts, and organizations. There are enough letters in those entities’ acronyms to fill the lake.
Lake Tahoe doesn’t care about the lines people draw on the map. And when we’re out enjoying the wonderful things that Tahoe has to offer — a sunrise paddle, a full moon snowshoe, or a dog walk through a sunlight-dappled forest — you and I don’t think too hard about which jurisdiction we’re in, either. We feel awe and appreciation before more rational thoughts start to creep in.
The things that could change Tahoe are place-agnostic as well. A wildfire burning in the Tahoe National Forest doesn’t throw on the brakes as it approaches the Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit boundary. As the Caldor Fire showed us in 2021, even the massive granite wall that makes up the Tahoe Basin’s western edge isn’t enough to stop wildfire in its tracks.
In the past, conservationists focused their mission and efforts on the 500-plus square miles within the Lake Tahoe Basin. Logic seemed to dictate that if pollution, flames, and other threats could be prevented in that space, then Tahoe would be safe. Climate change has shown us that’s no longer the case. Longer droughts, wetter winters, and more intense storms are weakening Tahoe’s defenses, making previously rare ecological events, like harmful algal blooms, more common.
On the same token, aquatic invasive species have to make their way in from the outside; it’s part of what makes them invasive. News headlines this summer have been packed with cautionary messages about invasive golden mussels, which were discovered in North America — in the Port of Stockton, more specifically — for the first time ever last fall. In the time since, these ecosystem-wrecking mollusks have traveled more than 300 miles across the state of California, from Bakersfield to Lake Oroville. In late May, a golden mussel was found at the boat inspection and decontamination station at Alpine Meadows. Fortunately, it was intercepted before it got into Donner Lake or Lake Tahoe, where it would almost certainly turn those beautifully clear waters greener and murkier.
This list of concerns, however, is no reason to feel defeated. On the contrary, let your optimism for Tahoe’s future run wild! Here’s why: we know more about what makes Tahoe tick than ever before, and more people are taking more actions more frequently to protect and conserve the region.
Tahoe’s scientific community — from UC Davis’s Tahoe Environmental Research Center, the University of Nevada, Reno, the Tahoe Science Advisory Council, and others — are building on our knowledge of Tahoe and how it works. There is, of course, truth to the old chestnut: “knowledge is power.” The more we know about what threatens Tahoe, how, and why, the more able we are to step in and stop it.
On the wildfire front, a coalition of local, state, and federal fire agencies, land managers, and other partners known as the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Teams have work underway to complete forest health and thinning projects on more than 7,500 acres in 2025.
To build climate change resilience, the California Tahoe Conservancy is moving closer to reverting the site of a former Motel 6 in South Lake Tahoe to its natural state, which will reconnect more than 750 acres of marsh and meadows that act as one of Tahoe’s largest natural pollution filters.
In response to the invasive golden mussel, Tahoe’s already robust boat inspection program was strengthened prior to this boating season. Now, all boats, jet skis, and e-foils must be inspected and decontaminated before they are allowed to launch. Organizations, agencies, businesses, and individuals are spreading the word with signage, ads and mailers, so paddlers, anglers, and beachgoers know to clean, drain, and dry their gear to ensure it’s invasive species-free before it touches the water.
The Destination Stewardship Plan knits together dozens of regional organizations to collaboratively improve how recreation and visitation are managed, so the environment and economy are sustainable. In the case of land use, consistency is key. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency oversees a single set of rules across the whole Basin that are inflected and shaped by local community input.
Across the region, hundreds of thousands of acres of public land act as a natural playground where we hike, camp, ski, and play. A recent federal proposal suggested selling off these wild spaces, which would have disastrous consequences. Tahoe’s public lands are managed by federal partners to protect our environment and communities against wildfire, and to safeguard Tahoe’s water quality. They must stay that way. Thankfully, individuals and organizations like Keep Tahoe Blue, where I work, spoke out against the proposal, and lawmakers got the message.
Much progress is being made to safeguard Tahoe, but we can’t become complacent. Protecting this special place is a race without a finish line. And like any worthy pursuit, the journey is just as important as the destination.
These big topics are proof positive that to protect and conserve Lake Tahoe for future generations, we have a lot of work left to do. Working together, we will keep Tahoe blue. All of it.
~ Jesse Patterson is the chief strategy officer for Keep Tahoe Blue, which has embraced collaborative action in its 2025-2029 Strategic Plan. Read it at keeptahoeblue.org/strategic-plan.
