This month saw the unveiling of the Lake Tahoe Destination Stewardship Plan, a 143-page document backed by a broad coalition of more than a dozen conservation, business, governmental and private entities that prioritizes "sustainably preserving" the goose that lays the golden egg - the twinkling cobalt waters that turn blue-green near the lake's 72 miles (115 kilometers) of shoreline. "Not that it is overtourism - I think that was a little bit shocking. How are we managing our tourism?" she said. "And that has a lot to do with the Fodor's article, really. "We know that we really need to get out of the tourism marketing business and get into the tourism management business," said Carol Chaplin, CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitor's Authority. (Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images) According to research, Lake Tahoe is the clearest its been since the 1980s. KINGS BEACH, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 30: Kayers and paddleboarders explore the water at Kings Beach in Kings Beach, Calif., on Friday, June 30, 2023. Roughly one-third the size of the Sierra Nevada's also-crowded Yosemite National Park, the Lake Tahoe Basin gets about three times as many visitors - around 15 million each year. The idea is to preserve a $5 billion local economy built around the tourists who come to hike, camp, boat, bike, ski and gamble, while also easing their impact on the environment and communities. Meanwhile, local business and tourism officials are lining up behind a new effort to persuade people to check out less trafficked parts of the lake and to visit outside of high season. Since Fodor's declared last November that "Lake Tahoe has a people problem," some unlikely voices have expressed a new willingness to consider taxes or fees on motorists, a nonstarter not long ago. "I cannot go to Sand Harbor, where I grew up unless I get in line at 7 in the morning." That includes her favorite, Sand Harbor, which lies just across the Nevada border and is known for its turquoise water and rock formations. "I can't go to my own beaches anymore," said Susan Daniels, 70, a lifelong resident of Kings Beach, California, whose parents met at a Tahoe-area ski resort in 1952. Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images Lake Tahoe tourism officials were surprised, and a bit miffed when a respected international travel guide put the iconic alpine lake straddling the California-Nevada line on its list of places to stay away from this year because of the harmful ecological effects of overtourism.īut with an influx of visitors and new full-time residents due to the COVID-19 pandemic already forcing local leaders to revisit the decades-old conversation about overcrowding, "Fodor's No List 2023" may have served as a wake-up call that some sort of change is necessary.
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