Saving a bird, saving Great Basin lakes
Coalition asks federal government to list Wilson's phalarope as threatened.
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Shorebirds are remarkable creatures. They fly an arduous course on long migrations, and their flight connects water sources thousands of miles away, from the Arctic to South America. These birds also face many threats to their habitat, which includes the saline lakes that dot the Great Basin: Mono Lake, Lake Abert and the Great Salt Lake.
On Thursday, a coalition of environmentalists and scientists petitioned the federal government to give one of these species added protection: The Wilson’s phalarope.
You can read the petition here.
In their migratory journey, these phalaropes rely on the saline lakes of the Great Basin for fuel. They eat brine shrimp and flies, doubling in weight. Here, they molt feathers to make way for new ones. Scientists view the lakes as “staging areas” before the birds fly more than 3,000 miles to South America, moving again to saline lakes in Argentina and the Andes, (habitat that is also threatened by a proliferation in lithium mining).
That habitat is disappearing in the Great Basin and beyond It’s well-documented that these three large Great Basin saline lakes, upon which the phalarope and many others depend, face threats from diversions that reduce inflows and a warming climate.
First, it’s worth recognizing that how water moves in the Great Basin is unique. Rivers here do not flow to the sea. They drain inland, reaching termini at desert lakes that support critters large and small. Such watersheds are known as endorheic basins.
And they face threats around the world.
These water bodies are very sensitive to change, and the last twenty years of drought and consistent demand for water have have created significant challenges, drying out ecosystems and making habitats unlivable for the small invertebrates that birds like the phalarope rely on. All of this, the coalition says, has left the species vulnerable.
Lake Abert has dried up twice in the last decade. The Great Salt Lake, notably, hit its lowest recorded level in 2022. Mono Lake, which has more legal protection because of a landmark public trust ruling in California, has still hovered around low lake levels.
“Without immediate protection,” the coalition wrote in its petition, “Great Salt Lake and Lake Abert, which together constitute a significant portion of the species range, could cease to provide viable Wilson’s phalarope habitat in the near future.”
The petition sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services on Thursday seeks to list the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. At a rally in Salt Lake City Thursday, supporters said it would provide a regulatory tool to prevent extinction.
To do that would require getting more water back to the Great Basin lakes.
“The more that I have learned about this species, the more I have gotten very worried about them from a conservation perspective,” said Ryan Carle, science director for Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, and the lead author for the 179-page petition.
Their entire range, he noted, faces threats right now, including the “staging areas.”
“And Great Salt Lake is on the forefront of the need to save it now,” he said.
It could take years for the Endangered Species Act listing to come to pass, but the speakers said they hoped the announcement would get politicians to act and bring another tool to saline lake recovery in the Great Basin, especially for the Great Salt Lake. Without the strong precipitation this year that helped the West recover from back-to-back drought, the Great Salt Lake, they said, would be in a crisis right now.
In a press release Thursday, Ben Abbott, a petition co-signer and associate professor of aquatic ecology at Brigham Young University said that “saline lakes are in decline around the world — no one has cracked the code on how to restore them.”
“Rescuing Great Salt Lake is going to take sustained focus from the state and federal government, and this petition will bring more resources and stakeholders to the table. I believe our community is going to succeed, but we need all the help we can get.”
Abbott and other speakers emphasized the importance of considering the Great Salt Lake and other Great Basin ecosystems in both a global context and in a context that includes not only environmental concerns, but also looks at broader regional health.
When lakes dry up, nearby communities often bear significant health consequences. Exposed areas, once underwater, contribute to dust storms and create health hazards.
It’s why among the groups that signed the Wilson’s phalarope petition was the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. Another petition signer was Terry Tempest Williams, a naturalist, author and writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School.
“It is our canary in the coal mine,” she said of the species. “Their health is our health, dependent on the health of Great Salt Lake. There is no separation between a healthy phalarope population and a healthy human population along the Wasatch Front.”
“Both of our lives are threatened by a shrinking Great Salt Lake.”
Here are some other threads I’m watching:
“Beavers belong in California, and they should be part of our fire management plan.” Great read on the role of beavers restoring burned areas and creating more resilient landscapes to wildfire. From the L.A. Times’ Alex Wigglesworth, with drone footage.
Demand for Nevada’s water buyback program, via the Nevada Current’s Jeniffer Solis.
A detailed look at where the Colorado River water goes, via the L.A. Times Ian James:
In a new study, researchers found that alfalfa and other cattle-feed crops consume 46% of the water that is diverted from the river, accounting for nearly two-thirds of agricultural water use. The research also shows that agriculture is the dominant user of Colorado River water, accounting for 74% of the water that is diverted — about three times the combined usage of all the cities that depend on the river.
I wrote about Las Vegas and its approach to deep municipal water conservation for Smithsonian Magazine’s latest issue. There’s a lot more to unpack that I couldn’t fit into this story, but I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this subject in the future.