Guests of Squaw Valley | Alpine Meadows Donate $43,235 to Watershed Health and Lake Clarity  with Green Bucks
$1 donations from guests add up in support of Tahoe Fund and Truckee River Watershed

[Olympic Valley, Calif.]—June 7, 2018—Thanks to the outstanding generosity of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows’ guests, the ski resort recently donated $43,235 to the Tahoe Fund and the Truckee River Watershed Council. This donation came from individual dollar donations that guests added to lift ticket and season pass sales during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. These donations—called “Green Bucks”— have helped in funding projects such as the restoration of the Truckee River from Tahoe City to Alpine Meadows and removing aquatic invasive weeds from Lake Tahoe.

Green Bucks is a partner program between the Tahoe Fund and the Truckee River Watershed Council that aims to harness the passion of visitors and residents to help care for our extraordinary mountain environment. Through Green Bucks, local businesses across the area allow guests to add donations to lift tickets, hotel rooms, golf rounds and meals.

“A huge thank-you to all of the guests of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows for helping to support our efforts to preserve the Tahoe environment,” said Amy Berry, CEO of the Tahoe Fund. “It is simply amazing to see how these dollar donations add up to a huge amount of support.”

“Thanks to the business community and their guests, conservation groups will be able to protect and restore more meadows and forests, and provide more recreation access,” said Lisa Wallace, Executive Director of the Truckee River Watershed Council.

Together with the resort, Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows guests give $40,000 annually to restore lakes and streams in the local area through these two critical organizations. To learn more about what Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows guests make possible, visit squawalpine.com/community.

Tahoe Resource Conservation District acquisition marks milestone for restoration efforts 

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (May 17, 2018) – Nearly a decade in the works, the Tahoe Resource Conservation District (Tahoe RCD) has finalized the acquisition of Johnson Meadow, putting the largest private stretch of South Lake Tahoe’s Upper Truckee River into public ownership.

The acquisition marks a major milestone for the health of the Upper Truckee River watershed, the largest watershed feeding into Lake Tahoe and one of the most impaired in the Sierra Nevada. The Upper Truckee River is a major contributor of fine sediment impacting the clarity of Lake Tahoe.

The purchase of the $8.315 million 206-acre property was made possible through a collaboration between Tahoe RCD, the California Tahoe Conservancy, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and the Tahoe Fund. The Mosher family, who owned Johnson Meadow for almost a century, at one time used the property as a dairy and for cattle grazing. The family protected the property from development for several decades until recently seeking a public agency to purchase and restore the land.

“This is the final large piece of the puzzle necessary to unlock what will be Tahoe’s largest restoration effort to date,” said Katy Simon Holland, Board Chair of the Tahoe Fund. “It took an epic collaboration to make this acquisition possible. We are incredibly grateful to have received early support and initial funding from Barton Health and Heavenly Mountain Resort.”

These private donations of $50,000 each were essential to demonstrate a strong local commitment to the project and to secure more than $8 million from Proposition 1, a water bond initiative approved by California voters in 2014.

The acquisition is the first step towards the most significant watershed restoration effort in the Tahoe Basin. Over the next several years, Tahoe RCD and its partners will be seeking $10-15 million to restore Johnson Meadow and more than $60 million for a collaborative effort to restore the Upper Truckee River watershed. Funding from Proposition 68, a parks bond on the June 2018 ballot, would provide a significant boost to this historic effort.

“Our goal is to prevent additional environmental degradation, preserve and enhance wildlife habitat, provide public access, and ensure a healthy watershed for future generations,” said Nicole Cartwright, executive director of Tahoe RCD.

The restoration strategy, which also includes major projects by the Tahoe Conservancy, the US Forest Service, the City of South Lake Tahoe, and California State Parks, aims to restore over 1,000 acres of unique and valuable habitat and reduce stream erosion by more than 50 percent.

Climate change resiliency will also be a focus as projects aim to improve the watershed’s ability to sustain rising temperatures, longer droughts, extreme floods, and other impacts of climate change, in addition to providing a refuge for native fish and wildlife species as temperatures increase at lower elevations.

Adapting to future climate change will be critical for watershed health and water management according to Katharine Davis Reich, associate director of communications at the UCLA Center for Climate Science, which recently completed projections of climate in the Sierra Nevada at the middle and end of this century. “Warmer temperatures will cause a greater share of precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow,” said Reich. “That means more wintertime rain and earlier, flashier pulses of runoff than we’re used to. The snowpack will also be smaller, so that runoff from snowmelt won’t last as long into the spring and summer.”

For more information on the acquisition or restoration efforts, please visit the Tahoe RCD website or the Tahoe Fund website.

The Tahoe Fund has expanded its Advisory Council to include the Forest Supervisor of the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Jeff Marsolais, and the Executive Director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Joanne Marchetta.  Marsolais and Marchetta add federal and regional agency representation to the council that already includes Patrick Wright, Executive Director of the California Tahoe Conservancy and Jim Lawrence, Deputy Director of Nevada’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

“The role of the Advisory Council is to provide counsel and advice to the Tahoe Fund Board as we develop and prioritize our initiatives,” said Board Chair, Art Chapman. “By adding these representatives to the council, we are rounding out the breadth of advice we receive from our important public agency partners.”

“With the ecological challenges we face around the Basin, the Tahoe Fund is a model in bringing together the public-private partnerships that can address those challenges,” said Marsolais. “The Tahoe Fund has been a wonderful partner and I look forward to serving on the Advisory Council.”

“The Tahoe Fund plays an important role in the work everyone is doing to help improve the Tahoe environment,” said Marchetta. “It is an honor to serve in advisory capacity to help the organization as it continues to grow into a major source of funding for critical environmental improvement projects around Lake Tahoe.”