Wilson's Phalarope. Photo by David McGowen.

Center for Biological Diversity and the Great Salt Lake

By Linda Ewing

Wilson’s Phalaropes are peculiar birds. Mention to one of their fans that you’ve seen one, and you’re likely to be met with a question: “was it spinning?”

That’s a reference to the species’ unique feeding style. Like other shorebirds, Wilson’s Phalaropes sometimes pick their way daintily through shallow water. Unlike other shorebirds, they also swim rapidly in tight circles—so tight and so fast that they appear to be spinning. The purpose is to create a whirlpool that pulls insects and small crustaceans to the surface, where the bird at the center of the vortex can pluck them from the water with its needle-like bill.

Female Wilson's Phalarope foraging. Photo by Danita Dlimont,.

Spinning isn’t the Wilson’s Phalarope’s only peculiarity. In a reversal of typical avian sex roles, females are larger, more colorful and more aggressive than males; it’s the female that puts on a display to attract a mate—or mates, as phalaropes are polyandrous—and initiates copulation. The male’s duller colors camouflage him as he sits on the nest and eventually cares for the pair’s young. By that time, female phalaropes will already be winging their way from the northern plains where they breed to the South American lakes where they spend the winter. Males and young will follow them a few weeks later.

The Great Salt Lake and Wasatch Mountains beyond. American Avocets and other shorebirds rely on the lake. Photo by Salil.

Along the way, the phalaropes converge with millions of other long-distance migrants in a handful of saline lakes scattered around the western United States. None is more important than Utah’s Great Salt Lake, the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere, and the largest wetland complex west of the Rockies. Fed by snowmelt from Utah’s mountains, the lake has no outlet. Instead, as it bakes under the sun of the Great Basin, evaporation concentrates the salts and minerals picked up during the water’s journey from mountain peak to desert floor, leaving the lake saltier than the ocean. Its size, location and abundant food sources—especially salt-loving brine shrimp and brine flies—make it a vital stopover for phalaropes and other migratory shorebirds, and an important breeding location for Eared Grebes and American White Pelicans.

As Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) puts it, “If you like birds, you need the Great Salt Lake. We’re talking about 10 million birds that stop there each year. There’s no other place like it.”

But this singular ecosystem is teetering on the edge of a precipice. Its surface area is less than half what it once was; large sections of the lakebed are now cracked and dry.

The Great Salt Lake is a crucial breeding site for American White Pelicans. Photo by Sandra Uecker / USFWS.

Donnelly, senior Utah campaigner Deeda Seed, and their CBD colleagues and alliance partners are determined to reverse the lake’s decline. Founded in 1989 out of a successful fight to protect nesting Spotted Owls in the Gila wilderness of New Mexico, the CBD is seeking to force the state of Utah to take necessary action to restore the lake to a sustainable level.

Fights over water aren’t new to Donnelly, who has spent more than two decades in conservation, most of that time in the desert west. “Working on species and public lands in the west,” he offers, “means you’re working on water.”

And working on water means tackling human decisions driven by politics and economics. Climate change has contributed to the Great Salt Lake’s decline, but the biggest and most immediate cause is the intentional diversion of water before it even reaches the lake. “60 to 70 percent of the inflow to the lake is being diverted to agriculture, primarily alfalfa,” Donnelly explains. There are other users, such as residential development, mining, and industry, but agriculture is the key player.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, where the Bear River flows into the Northeast arm of the Great Salt Lake. Photo by  Sandra Uecker / USFWS.

In late 2022, the Great Salt Lake dropped to its lowest level on record, sounding alarm bells across Utah. “Great Salt Lake set to vanish in 5 years,” blared a headline in the Deseret News. The scope of the potential catastrophe was becoming increasingly clear, beginning with the collapse of the ecosystem’s food web. As the lake goes from “Great” to “Lesser,” it is also becoming saltier. The increased salinity threatens even the brine shrimp and brine flies that fuel phalaropes and other shorebirds on their migratory journeys.

A shrinking lake threatens humans, too. The bottom of the Great Salt Lake is loaded with metals, many of them toxic. With more of the lakebed exposed, more of those toxins—now in particulate form—are picked up by the wind and blown across the surrounding area, where they are breathed in by more than two million people. “We’re already seeing increases in respiratory emergencies, and it’s only going to get worse,” Donnelly warns.

2022’s dire record produced a flurry of actions meant to stave off disaster: a first-ever Great Salt Lake Strategic plan, investments in water conservation, a program to lease water rights. But these were mostly stopgap measures. Meanwhile, heavier-than-usual snowfall over the following winter bred complacency. While the lake’s current level is up from its record low, it remains well below a healthy range.

“We’re one bad winter away from disaster,” Donnelly says. Instead of stopgap measures, the CBD seeks a long-term solution to structural problems in the watershed. To get there, it’s using a variety of approaches, both tried-and-true and innovative.

Large numbers of American Avocets depend on the Great Salt Lake as both a migratory stopover and a breeding site. Photo by Sheryl Ritter / USFWS.

One lever is litigation. The CBD, along with other environmental groups and the legal staff of Earthjustice, is taking the state of Utah to court. Its lawsuit is based on “public trust” doctrine, the idea that certain natural resources belong to everyone, and that the government has a corresponding duty to protect and maintain them. The state, of course, disagreed. It sought to have the case dismissed, essentially asserting “it’s our lake and we can let it dry up if we want to.” That’s how Donnelly paraphrases Utah’s argument; that a judge found this unconvincing and allowed the case to proceed is, he deadpans, a good sign.

Another lever is the Endangered Species Act, which brings us back to the Wilson’s Phalarope. Already, the species’ global population is estimated to have declined by 70 percent since the 1980s. As other saline lakes dry up, the birds have become increasingly dependent on the handful that remain—with the Great Salt Lake by far the most important. “Wherever you live, if you’ve seen a Wilson’s Phalarope, you can bet it’s passed through the Great Salt Lake,” Donnelly says. The fact that phalaropes molt at their migration staging areas, just when they need to double their body weight to fuel the long flight ahead, means they require abundant food sources close at hand. This leaves them exceptionally vulnerable to habitat disruption. Experts who study the birds agree: without the Great Salt Lake, the species faces extinction.

Wilson's Phalaropes. Photo by Ron Ozuna.

Typically, the filing of a petition under the Endangered Species Act is a low-key event, more about careful academic research and thorough paperwork than rallying citizens on the steps of their state capitol. Rallies that involve singing, dancing and elaborate bird costumes would be still more unusual. Yet that was exactly the scene around the Wilson’s Phalarope petition filed by the CBD and its allies. Lead campaigner Deeda Seed organized a colorful and poignant rally—complete with participants costumed as phalaropes—to publicize the petition and draw attention to the stakes.

Seed, with decades of experience in Salt Lake City politics and activism, has built strong community alliances around the need to save the Great Salt Lake. Her work brings together environmental organizations, faith-based groups, small business owners and parents concerned about their kids’ health. During the Utah legislature’s brief session, the citizen-lobbyists she trains flood the capitol to press their case.

Mixing legal and regulatory action, community mobilization, alliance building and legislative lobbying is typical of the CBD’s campaign. “I believe we can save the Great Salt Lake,” Donnelly emphasizes. “It’s not a partisan issue; breathing air that doesn’t poison you isn’t a partisan issue. And in the end the solution is very simple.”

All that’s required is determination—and money. A long-term solution rests on sufficient funding to buy out rights to the water that’s currently being diverted from the lake. While the cost may be beyond the reach of the state acting alone, Utah’s congressional delegation is well-positioned to win federal assistance.

The marshes around the Great Salt Lake are a vital breeding ground for the White-faced Ibis. Photo by Sandra Uecker / USFWS.

Ultimately, the state and the country will be choosing between two possible futures.

One is a nightmare landscape, scarred with deep fissures in the hard, parched soil. Desert winds no longer ripple the water of a vast lake; instead, they sweep over a barren lakebed and spread arsenic-laced dust across the Wasatch Front. The once-thriving brine shrimp harvest is no more. Tourism to the region is much diminished. And the Wilson’s Phalarope? No one has seen one in years.

In the future that the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies envision, the lake has returned to a healthy and sustainable level. Catamarans, kayaks and tour boats crisscross its waters; visitors laugh as they try to submerge themselves, marveling at their unaccustomed buoyancy. Children breathe clean air. Abundant brine shrimp support both a commercial fishery and the millions of birds that descend on the lake each spring and fall. In the summer, Eared Grebes carry their chicks on their backs while White Pelicans flap slowly overhead.

And Wilson’s Phalaropes continue to spin.

The Great Salt Lake and roosting Caspian Terns. Photo by One Bear Marytherese / USFWS.

To learn more about the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as to contribute directly, please visit their website.

American Bird Conservancy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas.