Tahoe yellow cress is a flowering perennial plant in the mustard family that grows on Lake Tahoe’s sandy shorelines and nowhere else in the world. Over the last two decades, habitat threats to Tahoe yellow cress have been managed and successfully reduced by federal, state, local, and private sector partners on the Tahoe Yellow Cress Adaptive Management Working Group. This group has protected the plant and its habitat with the 2002 comprehensive conservation strategy. Because of the collaborative work of this group, and the robust conservation strategy, in 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the plant did not require additional protections under the federal Endangered Species Act. Tahoe yellow cress populations are highly responsive to changing water levels in Lake Tahoe, thriving on exposed sandy beaches and natural areas when lake levels are low. When the lake level is high, populations decrease because these habitat areas are submerged. However, the Conservation Strategy provides actions such as seed bank programs, increased fencing around population sites, and planting of additional areas, to assure that Tahoe yellow cress populations increase when lake levels drop. Tahoe yellow cress is monitored by partners around the Tahoe Region at all potential population sites as part of a Region-wide survey each year in September.

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