GBI is proud to announce that we have entered into a new partnership with the California Tahoe Conservancy. Established in 1985, the Conservancy is a California state agency, which owns and manages approximately 6,500 acres of land, with the stated purpose of “protecting the natural environment and promoting public recreation and access to Lake Tahoe.”
In support of the Conservancy’s mission to “lead California’s efforts to restore and enhance the extraordinary natural and recreational resources of the Lake Tahoe Basin” GBI Research Associates are bringing their expertise to bear upon the Tahoe Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI). Currently working on this project are James Sedlak, Outreach Associate, and Sydney Wilson, Project/Data Management Associate.
“We’re advancing stakeholder engagement by developing communication strategy, designing marketing materials consistent with agency branding, and building relationships with public and private entities across the 2.4 million acre initiative landscape,” says James. “One key component of our day-to-day is collecting data on forested watershed health and community wildfire protection projects across ownerships to improve coordination, support a shared strategy for restoring resilience across all lands, and better identify capacity needs of organizations.” Additionally, Sydney creates maps to visualize the data for partners and stakeholders, and will be developing a data library of tabular and spatial data. This will help TCSI track, monitor, and report on projects.
Although our partnership is still young, it’s off to a great start. As Sydney explains, “CTC has been extremely supportive of our work and has been very welcoming. It has been a pleasure working with CTC and partnering agencies, and I find the work very rewarding. I am excited to see how TCSI moves forward.” Adds James, “It’s been a fast-paced, collaborative effort to ramp up coordination on internal operations and embark on external facing efforts, especially in preparation for the CA Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force Meeting on September 27 in Grass Valley, CA. Overall, the CTC team and partnering agencies have been highly supportive and open to our ideas as Research Associates. It’s been a great experience so far.”
Clearly, there is a lot of enthusiasm for this partnership and we’re excited to see its continued development. To learn more about the California Tahoe Conservancy, please visit their website: https://tahoe.ca.gov/
Photo Credit: Chelsea Peer