About the California Tahoe Conservancy

The California Tahoe Conservancy (Conservancy) is a state agency, established in 1984, with a mission to lead California’s efforts to restore and enhance the extraordinary natural and recreational resources of the Lake Tahoe Basin. The Conservancy’s jurisdiction spans the 236 square miles of the California side of the Basin.

State Conservancies

California’s ten state conservancies play an integral role in conserving, protecting, and restoring natural resources and providing public recreational opportunities. Together, the conservancies comprise a coordinated effort, bringing government resources to designated regions of State and national significance. Learn more about the state conservancies and the Wildlife Conservation Board. 

Managing Your Public Lands

The California Tahoe Conservancy manages and protects nearly 4,700 state properties, totaling over 6,600 acres, for the purpose of protecting the natural environment and promoting public recreation and access to Lake Tahoe.

Local and Regional Grants

The Conservancy has also provided over 320 grants to government partners and nonprofit organizations for projects to restore the Lake Tahoe watershed, provide public recreation and access, protect ecologically important lands, improve forest health and reduce the threat of wildfire. Read the Conservancy grant guidelines. Since 1997, such grants have supported the Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program. 

Tahoe Livable Communities

The Conservancy’s Tahoe Livable Communities Program helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, restore sensitive lands, and revitalize the Basin’s town centers through the acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands, the transfer of development rights, and the sale, lease, or exchange of the Conservancy’s developable parcels in town centers.

Large-Scale Watershed and Landscape Restoration

The Conservancy collaboratively leads large-scale watershed and landscape restoration initiatives with over 50 public agencies to reduce wildfire threat, and plays a lead role in enhancing the Basin’s resilience and ability to adapt to climate change.

In all, the Conservancy has funded hundreds of environmental improvement projects, and has played a major role in the restoration of the Basin’s most environmentally sensitive areas, addressing the threat of climate change, and the reduction of wildfire risk within the Basin. In its first thirty years, these activities totaled over $450 million.

Tribal Consultation Policy: The purpose of this policy is to ensure effective government-to-government consultation between the California Natural Resources Agency and its Departments and Indian tribes and tribal communities to provide meaningful input in the development of regulations, rules, policies, programs, projects and property decisions and activities that may affect tribal communities.

Visit the Conservancy’s Tribal Affairs page to learn more about the Conservancy’s commitment to consulting and partnering with the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California and other Native American tribes who have lived in and around the Lake Tahoe Basin.