Educate and Support a Dedicated Team of
'Travel Rangers' who understand Nevada's
1) Indigenous Wisdom - Community, Culture, Heritage 
2) Lake, Desert, Forest and Wildlife Habitat 'Carrying Capacity'
3) 12 Sustainability Principles and 4 steps of Geotourism 
4) TriNomics - business, government, and nonprofit collaboration
5) New Career paths will preserve natural resources and infrastructure with responsible travel leadership
6) Sustainable Travel Adventure Network makes it easy for travelers to choose Geotourism activities sponsored by Green businesses

Stewardship travel immersion program

Why?

1. Wherever you stand in water and on land - someone or something lives there. This requires businesses, residents and travelers to make responsible choices that sustain and enhance the natural resources of the destination. 
   
2. DMO's (Destination Marketing Orgs) are no longer the key guides as travelers pull a variety of unregulated activities online. Short Term Rental lodging practices lack educated, onsite Hosts that add to this mixed access problem.
3. The current visitor activity menu requires billions of dollars for ongoing mitigation, restoration and clean-up expenses.
4. Tourism industry, govt agencies, major business stakeholders have begun to steer advertising and marketing strategies toward sustainability; however, Lake Tahoe's water clarity is still falling and over-tourism has impacted this travel destination.
   
5. There is no paid (with housing like rangers) dedicated and educated team whose ongoing purpose is to ensure  goals become a reality.   
   
6. 60 years of Lake science provides clear guidelines on how to preserve clarity and what types of recreation, transportation and construction contribute to the degradation of the water quality. Reference: 2010 State of the Lake Report.
7. 2010 TRPA Environmental Improvement Program highlights the cost to mitigate the public's footprint - $1.4Billion. Costs were estimated to exceed $2.45B by 2020

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10,000 years of washoe people's stewardship legacy provide insight

Our role is to accelerate the adoption of responsible travel by educating, proposing, demonstrating and facilitating Geotourism (recreation stewardship travel) in the Tahoe Truckee Watershed.

Geotourism Expo was a "Learn-by-Doing" model, so agencies, businesses and NGO’s could experience Geotourism using what we have in new ways. Adventures spread out over 150-miles and involved collaboration by 55 to 85 NGO’s, agencies, and businesses. Tahoe Expo demonstrated  how to create and host a "community owned" tourism menu that was beneficial for our visitors and destination alike - 365 days a year. This creates paid jobs that contribute to the well being of the watershed, wildlife and people included. 
The Prosperity Plan  identified Geotourism (destination stewardship) in the ‘Visitor Satisfaction’ cluster as a key action in service to long-term prosperity and water clarity.

what if...

1. Inspire Visitors to adopt stewardship behaviors
   
2. People CARE about things they feel CONNECTED to and SHARE at that level of caring.  Immersive adventures hosted with inspired stewardship is how we Sustain Tahoe!   Increasing "Visitor Satisfaction" is a “High Priority Action” section of the 2010 Lake Tahoe Basin Prosperity Plan (LTBPP) Final Report (pg. 57-79).
3. Work as ONE WATERSHED
   TriNomics ™ provides a collaborative guide for building GeoTracks:   Geotourism is an international strategy endorsed by five departments of the U.S. Department of the Interior​

​Collaboration

1. Learn from others. 
   The Northeast Kingdom shares similar assets and challenges as Tahoe, with upscale resorts to rural farming. Local leaders asked “What do you love in our destination and not want to lose?" and "What is one thing you are willing to do to help sustain the destination?” This focused efforts from competing to collaborating. They changed their marketing and menu items to highlight unique assets that attracted visitors to stay longer and explore more; return sooner and share new exciting stories.
   
   
2. Sustainability Innovators. David Hansen helped Embassy Suites save $400K a year by implementing energy monitoring, composting and other measures in sustainability.  He shared this turn-around model at our 2010 Stewardship Congress to raise awareness and motivate others to lead-by-example. 2010 Stewardship Congress-Speaker summaries
   
   
3. Learn-By-Doing Sustainable Tahoe facilitated a collaboration with Business, college and resort. 
   Students from Sierra Nevada College created a Geotourism recreation program for a resort to help increase their revenues. San Jose State University students submitted Geotourism Adventure ideas: SJSU student created GeoTrack
   
   
4. TriNomics™: a collaborative model designed by Sheri Woodsgreen CEO of WISE Ventures .
   We adopted TriNomics™ : .ORG; .GOV; and .COM  to ensure adventures had buy-in from all stakeholders.

• Non-Profit - .Org: guides the Geotour adventures to enrich the visitors understanding and protect nature.
• Agencies - .Gov: offers grants and access to sensitive or remote areas.
• Business - .Com: provides and supports "Eat | Sleep | Shop | Play" for the destination visitors.

The need for Geotourism was further confirmed and endorsed by U.S. Vice President Al Gore at the 2013 Tahoe Executive Summit when he said,
​ ​                     “The future will look at this Lake and either ask, Why didn’t you do something?….or.... How did you do this?” 
​                                                If we succeed in protecting Lake Tahoe and the Watershed, our answer will be,
                                                    "We found a way to make political collaboration a renewable resource!”

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