Jack Ray

Abstract: Can the Extraordinary Legacy of Utah Waterfowling on the Great Salt Lake Survive Permanently Reduced Lake Levels?

The astonishing numbers of wildfowl drawn to the Great Salt Lake have nourished local residents as long as people have lived along its shores. Instead of abandoning this dependence, the first 100 years of settlement of the region only strengthened it. Subsistence hunting to market hunting to “recreational” hunting evolved with time to form a strong cultural connection to the Lake as generations of Utahns relied on it for food, fun and a bond with a unique natural environment. Although that reliance continues to feed, literally and figuratively, the state’s 15,000 waterfowlers and the tens of thousands of Utahns who consume the Lake’s bounty, it is increasingly threatened. Industrial development has gradually overrun miles of surrounding private marshes, contaminated water and, now, brings the pending loss of enough of the lake’s water to irretrievably cripple an already weakened ecosystem. The remaining private and public marshes preserved for decades by or at the behest of the state’s waterfowlers serve as the last bastions of this heritage but could easily fall silent with the loss of the Lake’s wildlife and the way of life that arose from it.