Stewards of Tahoe’s natural world

the outdoors | recreation | events | mountain life

The Tahoe Institute for Natural Science has brought Tahoe’s fascinating nat has brought Tahoe’s fascinating natural history and science to more than 12,000 people in hundreds of informative talks and presentations over the last 11 years. TINS, as they are known as, provides important scienti c research, as well as natural science curriculum and instruction to students throughout the region. And there is plenty of good stu for adults from festivals, events and hundreds of guided nature outings.

TINS is also “widely recognized as the go-to source for esoteric natural history information by both the public and local agencies alike,” said Will Richardson, TINS executive director. “You wouldn’t believe the breadth of topics of phone calls and email inquiries we get. at’s what we’re here for. We want to be that resource.”

And they do all of these programs with a sta of just three dedicated, busy people.

TINS expert naturalists take people bird watching, provide geology presentations, lead star-gazing expeditions and conduct wild ower walks.

“ e easiest thing to do is check out our calendar and see what is available,” said Richardson. e chance is good there will something you can get involved with that will be interesting to you. For those who have always found birds fascinating, but don’t know their names or which ones make what sounds, a walk with a TINS naturalist will open up a whole new world.

TINS also involves the public in citizen science, where individuals can do their part to further our scienti c understanding of the region. ere are butter y counts, annual bird counts and the midJanuary Bald Eagle count, which attempts to gure out how many eagles are in the Tahoe Basin. Recently they had a weekend dedicated to counting and identifying damsel ies and dragon ies.

“We discovered a dragon y not seen in the area since 1914,” said Richardson.

I’ve been on several bird-watching

STORY BY TIM HAUSERMAN| PHOTOS COURTESY TINS

Kids learning about nature on top of Donner Pass.

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hikes with Richardson and Sarah Hockensmith, TINS outreach director, and was astounded at their level of knowledge about birds. I love Tahoe’s birds, but can identify them only by sight. e TINS folks can hear some little tweet in the trees and quickly say, “Oh that’s a yellow ‘thingamajig.’” (Perhaps, I should have been listening better). ey helped me to understand how by paying attention we can discover a lot more about what is going on in the trees.

I also spent an extremely cold morning with Richardson on the island in Lake Forest counting bald eagles, which was where I learned it takes both patience and lots of warm clothes to be a scienti c researcher.

“Our overarching, ultimate goal is to create and cultivate a community that understands and cares about our natural resources. We do that through public education.” said Richardson. is is especially important these days when increases in visitation has unfortunately also meant more litter, degradation of our trails and other negative impacts on the natural resources. Stewardship of our local resources has become a rallying cry for the Lake Tahoe community. TINS is helping to provide sorely lacking stewardship skills to the public.

One of the interesting ways you will see Richardson providing natural resource education is on a number of Tahoeoriented Facebook groups. Richardson knows his science and he is often the guy to pop in with the answer to the “What is this bird?” question. Often when the rest of the commenters are stumped, someone will tag Richardson and, voilà, he comes up with the correct answer every time.

Someday TINS hopes to create a natural history-oriented visitor center.

“ ere are 25 million visitors to Lake Tahoe each year and every single one of them is looking for some sort of natural history experience,” said Richardson.

LEFT: Will Richardson talking to kids about birds; RIGHT: TINS annual Bald Eagle count.

“We don’t have a central clearing house of information that can serve that demand. Any national park will have a visitor center you can pop into and get grounded. Especially for kids, it’s critically important that they understand the resources and can make good decisions, to be good stewards.”

Richardson feels there is a huge demand for such a facility; it could serve a lot of people and be an anchor for the community similar to how Monterey Bay Aquarium serves the city of Monterey. A visitor center would also ll a critical void for visitors as a great place to go on a rainy, or smoky, day.

In the meantime, with visions of a visitor center dancing in their heads, Tahoe Institute for Natural Science provides a valuable service: educating the Tahoe community and visitors on the natural history of this amazing part of the Sierra Nevada. | tinsweb.org 