Journey to Two Lakes: Tahoe and Baikal

By Karen Smallwood, Erin McCauley and Mary Small Photos by Karen Smallwood

Lake Tahoe and Lake Baikal. The brilliantly clear water of these two lakes is arresting. But the future is murky for these ancient rift lakes, two of the deepest, oldest and clearest of their kind.

Baikal, over one mile deep and as long as the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco, contains 20 percent of the world's unfrozen fresh water resources. Over half of the 2,615 plant and animal species found in the Baikal region are endemic-one well-known example is the nerpa, the world's only freshwater seal. The nerpa and other unique species are threatened, however, by pollution from a pulp and paper mill, and inflow from the Selenga river, which carries waste from eastern Siberia and Mongolia. Many large boats also dump their effluents directly into the clear waters of Baikal.

Tahoe's pollution problems are different but equally grave. Over 1,000 feet deep at its deepest point, Tahoe's volume is less than one percent that of Baikal. The lake is situated high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, at an elevation of 6,228 feet. However, it is quite accessible to tourists and accommodates hundreds of thousands of visitors throughout the winter and summer. Cars make a huge contribution to air pollution and erosion, two of the leading causes of eutrophication (growth of algae) in Tahoe. Jet skis and other water craft also dump large quantities of fuel into the lake. Tahoe is currently losing water clarity at a rate of 1.5 feet per year. Both of these lakes are fighting for survival.

This summer, through the Tahoe-Baikal Institute's 1997 environmental exchange program, nine Russians, eight Americans and one woman from Klaipeda, Lithuania, had the opportunity to gain a rare understanding of these two great lake regions, and an inside look at the issues surrounding their protection.

The university-level program began in California, where we spent five weeks studying environmental problems at Lake Tahoe, meeting the people who are affected by these problems, and those who work to solve them. By participating in direct project work, we experienced some of what is actually involved in protecting these areas. We then journeyed to Siberia, where we spent another five weeks studying the situation at Lake Baikal. We learned what these two lakes mean to the people who live there and saw the effects of change on the resources and communities of the region. We learned first-hand about opportunities for and barriers to environmental protection.

During the time that we spent living, studying and working in the Tahoe Basin we talked to many people whose lives are connected to the lake. We learned about the role of community groups in the effort to save it. Elders of the Washoe tribe demonstrated ancient basket-weaving techniques, explaining how vital the native bracken fern are in their art. From a research vessel we learned about reasons for the steady loss of water clarity in Lake Tahoe: erosion, air pollution and invasion of exotic species. From these and other meetings with nonprofit groups, ranchers, federal, state and municipal agencies, we learned not just about biological systems, but also about the social and economic context of Tahoe's problems. We studied the intricate, watershed-based approach that has been created to enable federal, state and local cooperation across state and county lines to address Tahoe's great ecological needs. This understanding helped us grasp the complexity of the problems facing the lake.

The Tahoe Basin is crowded in the summertime. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come to the lake each year, bringing their cars, bikes and motorboats. The streets are clogged with traffic and the shores of the lake are crowded with people. Lake Baikal is remote. Standing on the shore of the world's largest lake, you feel alone and very small. In the summer, the lake is peaceful and serene. Baikal is vast, larger than you can see-on the horizon, the edge of the lake blends into the sky. In Tahoe there are gift shops, hotels and casinos, but at Baikal, there are no attractions other than the lake itself. Tourists go there for simple relaxation in nature.

After two and a half days on a train from Khabarovsk in the Far East to Irkutsk, we passed along the south shore of the lake. All of the program participants crowded to the windows and stared out at Baikal. For the Russians it was their homecoming, for the rest of us, it was our first view of this great lake. During our camping trips and expeditions at Baikal, the Russian participants' love for the lake was obvious, but we all felt equally privileged to be standing on its magnificent shores.

Even though relatively few people live around the lake, human impacts are evident in the litter along the trails and the scarred campsites. A Pribaikalsky National Park ranger expressed extreme frustration working with the limited staffing resources that the Park can provide. He talked about difficulties in fighting fires and enforcing littering rules with such meager support. Addressing the problem of trash in the National Park involves issues of infrastructure, landfills and human behavior. As in Tahoe, Baikal's ecosystem is inextricably connected to cultural and economic systems. Solutions to the complex challenges of stopping industrial pollution or creating a viable system of national parks must address both the ecological issues facing the lake and the social issues facing the country.

Baikal is so large that there is a risk we will not see the damage caused by human activities until the problems are very serious. Some people believe that the lake's volume is so great it can absorb the pollutants flowing in. While it is hard to imagine that human activity could destroy such a vast resource, our time at Tahoe led us to think differently. The environmental conservation movement caught Tahoe on the brink of disaster and although the movement is now well-established, the fate of the lake is still uncertain. Baikal has recently become a World Heritage site. This, in conjunction with the strong connection people feel to the lake, has great potential to promote preservation. Maybe the race against pollution at Baikal has begun early enough. After this summer, both lakes have personal meaning for the participants of the Tahoe-Baikal Institute, and we have a better understanding of the challenges facing them. How fortunate it would be if, instead of following the tragic examples of other great natural resources like the Aral Sea, Owens Valley, and Lake Tahoe, Lake Baikal could turn out to be a success story for Russia and the rest of the world.

Karen Smallwood is program director of the Tahoe-Baikal Institute. Erin McCauley is a Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering major at Rice University. Mary Small is a graduate student in Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley. The authors wish to thank the participants of the 1997 Tahoe-Baikal Institute for their help in writing this article.