USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit

The USDA Forest Service 

The Forest Service is a bureau of the Department of Agriculture, and has the responsibility to manage 191,000,000 acres of public lands called National Forests and Grasslands across the nation. National Forests are managed under the principles of conservation of resources, balancing resource protections with multiple uses.

Management through conservation has been a successful strategy for managing lands and resources since the establishment of the Forest Service in 1905.

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit

Over 78 percent of the area around the lake is public land managed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. Totaling over 154,851 acres, this land includes beaches, hiking and biking trails, wilderness, historic estates, and developed recreation areas such as campgrounds and riding stables. The forest is managed to provide access for the public and to protect the natural resources of the area. We hope you will join us in ensuring that the lake and surrounding lands will be even more beautiful and healthy in the future than they are now.

The Forest Service manages the land in the Lake Tahoe Basin as a unique kind of National Forest, called the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, or LTBMU for short. The LTBMU is managed in many ways like other National Forests, but because of the needs of the lake and the relationship it has with the forests that surround it, the LTBMU has special focus areas, including:

• Erosion Control Management
• Watershed Restoration
• Fire and Fuels Management
• Forest Management
• Recreation Management

In many ways the LTBMU can be described as a Restoration Forest because of the strong ecosystem restoration roles.

The LTBMU and the Take Care initiative go hand in hand. Working together towards a single message on what people can do to protect the natural environment in Lake Tahoe.