“I Am Haunted by What I Have Seen at Great Salt Lake”

From a distance, it is hard to tell whether the three figures walking the salt playa are human, bird or some other animal. Through binoculars, I see they are pelicans, juveniles, gaunt and emaciated without water or food. In feathered robes, they walk with the focus of fasting monks toward enlightenment or death.

This was not a dream or a nightmare, but the first time I realized Great Salt Lake was in danger of disappearing. It was the fall of 2016.

The lake’s Gunnison Island has been a sanctuary to one of the largest white pelican rookeries in North America, with as many as 20,000 nesting individuals. The watery distance from the island to the mainland has protected the pelicans from predators. Now, young pelicans are easy prey for coyotes crossing the land bridge created as the waters receded.

Most likely spooked by coyotes, the adolescent pelicans fled the island, but their wings were not strong enough to fly the miles to fresh water for fish. Forced down by fatigue, they were dying from hunger and thirst. Walking behind them at a respectful distance felt like a funeral procession. I passed 60 salt-encrusted bodies stiff on the salt flats, hollow bones protruding from crystallized clumps of feathers, wings splayed like fans waving in the heat.

I have known Great Salt Lake in flood and now in drought; between her highest level at 4211.8 feet in 1987 and her lowest at 4188.5 feet in 2022. Maps and newspapers call her the Great Salt Lake, but to me, she’s Great Salt Lake.

For 13,000 years, the lake has existed with no outlet to the sea, her large deposits of salt left behind through evaporation. Lately, evaporation from heat and drought accelerated by climate change, combined with overuse of the rivers that feed it, have shrunk the lake’s area by two-thirds. A report out of Brigham Young University and other institutions earlier this year warned that the contraction has been quickening since 2020 and that if we do not take emergency measures immediately, Great Salt Lake will disappear in five years.

Read more from Terry Tempest Williams:  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/opinion/great-salt-lake-drought-utah-climate-change.html.