January 17, 2025

A Call to Binoculars 30 Years Later

“I have to confess. I am hopeful this night will be viewed as a major historical milestone for Great Salt Lake. I am hopeful that ten or twenty years from now,

we will look back on this night as a beginning of a more organized public effort

to preserve and enhance the wetlands ecosystem.."

–Wayne Martinson, Utah Wetlands Coordinator, National Audubon, 1994.

In 1994, the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah sponsored a Winter Lecture Series that focused on the beauty and mystery of Great Salt Lake. The goal of the four-part series was to “celebrate the inherent values of this predominant and priceless feature of the landscape by drawing on local scholars with national acclaim to further instill a sense of community pride in the Great Salt Lake, and provide an opportunity for the community to discover it as an ally.”

The timing of the lecture series was opportune. In 1986, the Great Salt Lake had achieved a new historic high elevation of 4211.85’ ASL. That elevation woke up the surrounding political and population landscape to the fact that this saline system was inherently “problematic.” The flooding and property damage on and around the Lake required costly and extraordinary responses to address them. Six years later, the Bear River Development Act was passed to address the future water demand of northern Utah’s growing population. The Act authorizes the development of 220,000 acre-feet of the surface water and tributaries of the Bear River, diverting its inflows via reservoirs, pipelines and pump stations to municipal water conservancy districts along the Wasatch Front. These are the very inflows that provide the lion’s share of water to Great Salt Lake. That same year, due to its importance to migratory phalaropes, Great Salt Lake was designated as a Hemispheric Site of importance within the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. And the beat goes on.

Relevant, inspiring, and critical for the Lake, the 1994 lecture series inspired participants to experience a sense of wonder, awareness, and responsibility as Lake stakeholders. The series helped them better understand its personality as a complex and critical saline system with incredible ecological values and economic benefits. It offered a unique invitation to learn how and why the Great Salt Lake ecosystem is a place that reflects the dynamics of change; geologically, culturally, and environmentally. A place of regional, hemispheric, and global significance for millions of migratory birds that rely on the Lake for resting, staging, and nesting. And how, as a public trust resource for Utah, it is an extraordinary gift that relies on its ever growing and informed community as an ally to preserve and protect it in perpetuity.

“Under certain conditions, a place becomes part of us: we own it. We absorb it into our lives, It cannot be taken from us. It is ours, and without title or deed. We are associated with a certain spot of earth: we have our lives shaped by it; or if that be not the case, we stamp the place with our individuality.”

            – Alfred Lambourne, English-born American artist and author

Contributing to this insightful depth of field about the Lake were four notable scholars:

Don Currey’s presentation Air, Earth, Fire and Water: The Alchemy of the Great Salt Lake provided a geologic and geographic rundown of the Lake. As a beloved scholar of Lake Bonneville sediments and landforms, Currey, a University of Utah Professor of Geography, saw them as the key to unraveling the detailed history of climate change of western, continental, North America.

“Don valued field work and field experience and made the Great Basin and western United States his students’ outdoor laboratory. A cause that absorbed much of his attention was to protect critical landforms, primarily Lake Bonneville features, that preserve important Earth systems information but are threatened by destruction mining and urban sprawl. He was a skilled observer with outstanding ability to spot and identify natural features. He thought in four dimensions always, everywhere (latitude, longitude, elevation, and time). Don and graduate students working with him made tremendous contributions to the public’s and decision maker’s understanding of Great Salt Lake.”

– Genevieve Atwood, former State Geologist

 Joseph R. Jehl, was a research associate and Director of the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute in the 1970s and 80s. An ornithologist with a lifetime of experience focusing on migratory bird species, Jehl was an early voice declaring and describing the importance of saline lakes to many nesting and migratory birds. His presentation The Living Dead Sea helped extend the reach of the audience into the hemisphere.

“His research on species that rely on saline lake environments as a key part of their migratory cycle began at Mono Lake. What was the relationship between the Lake’s macro invertebrates and the most prominent species at the lake, California Gull, Eared Grebe, Wilson’s and Red-necked Phalaropes?

Investigating the significance of Mono Lake to the conservation of these species naturally led to questions about what other saline lakes were important to these birds. The Great Salt Lake (GSL) is the largest of the salt lakes in the Great Basin, thus an obvious place to look. Contracting with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR), Dr. Jehl looked into Great Salt Lake’s importance to the four species.

   Great Salt Lake was identified as the most significant saline migratory habitat for both Wilson’s and Red-necked Phalarope. The annual migratory population size of Wilson’s phalarope exceeded 500,000 during the 1980 survey years. The GSL was thus designated as a Hemispheric Site of importance within the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network due to its importance to migratory phalaropes.”                     

– Don Paul, retired wildlife biologist, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources

Dean L. May, Professor of History at the University of Utah, discussed the history and impact of human activities around the Lake from Archaic to modern cultures. His lecture was titled Bayous, Beaches and Breaches.

“The Great Salt Lake, a “vast inland sea,” is perhaps the most distinctive of all Utah’s natural features. Though locals relegate it to a position on their list of Utah’s wonders approximating its elevation in the landscape about it, the lake has a way of making its presence known.”

– Dean May, Utah: A People’s History (basis of the award winning television series)

Terry Tempest Williams gave the final lecture, titled The Truth About the Liquid Lie. A steadfast advocate for the Lake, Tempest Williams’s 1991 book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place brought Great Salt Lake into the hearts and minds of countless readers.

“The Greater Wasatch Front has roughly 400,000 more people that it did ten years ago, over two-thirds of this population increase comes from our own internal birth-rate. The capacity for Great Salt Lake to breathe, to move in and out according to yearly fluctuations, has been reduced by development closer to the shoreline. We are losing critical buffer lands such as farms and open space necessary for the birds as amnesia plagues city and county officials who refuse to make tough planning and zoning decisions. And of course, water is perhaps the most critical of all.”

   –Terry Tempest Williams

Wayne Martinson, Utah Wetlands Coordinator for National Audubon Society, then invited the audience to respond to a Call to Binoculars. Wayne’s aim was to extend the reach of this deep and briny drink of information into a commitment by Great Salt Lake’s community to take action to preserve and protect it in perpetuity as a public trust. He celebrated the Lake’s wildlife and beauty and emphasized the dangers it faces from past and present development on and around it. This is development that brings pollution, impacts water inflows, wildlife and their habitats. Characterizing these pressures as “a death by a thousand cuts,” he noted the timely and highly consequential creation of the Mono Lake Committee in 1978 to help protect Mono Lake’s public trust values. He proposed that an organized effort be made to help people understand the values of Great Salt Lake, help promote research and education about the Lake, and advocate for the Lake. With that, he invited people to sign up on clipboards to help organize this new group. The takeaway was the creation of FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake.

In 1996, FRIENDS hosted its first biennial Great Salt Lake Issues Forum. Policymakers, researchers, resource managers, planners, environmental advocates, and citizens representing federal, state, and local agencies, organizations, and private interests participated. Attendance of 150 people made this all-day event enlightening and engaging. Issues addressed at the forum included water and air quality, the health, resiliency, and productivity of the brine shrimp population, and the need for more research on the brine shrimp ecology to aid in making policy decisions. Effects of current and proposed dikes and causeways, the global significance of the lake’s wetlands and wildlife habitat, and underscored threats posed by population growth and encroachment were also discussed. It was evident that more educational programs were needed to help the public better understand, access, and enjoy the Lake. And the Forum helped FRIENDS realize the level of concern there is about the future of the Lake and how real the threats to it are, and the work that needs to be done.

In 1997, the Utah Chapter of the Wildlife Society presented their annual Conservation Achievement Award to FRIENDS for their efforts to bring Great Salt Lake and its many values into public focus.

And the rest is history.

In 2024, FRIENDS hosted its 14th biennial Great Salt Lake Issues Forum.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve taken more than 35,000 4th grade students to the Lake through our Lakeside Learning Field Trip program. Since 2003, we’ve awarded the Doyle W. Stephens Scholarship to graduate and undergraduate students for their research in the watershed. And because our Lake is a rich source for artistic inspiration, we have recognized that powerful expression through our Alfred Lambourne Arts Program since 2014. At the end of the day, though, it’s always our job to advocate for the Lake, whatever that entails. With sound science as its guide, public process, and the law, we use all of the tools at our disposal—including seemingly countless legal actions—to stand up for the Lake.    

On October 3, 2024, FRIENDS celebrated its 30th Anniversary of working to preserve and protect the Great Salt Lake ecosystem in perpetuity. And the briny beat goes on.

WE GO!

In saline and solidarity,

Lynn de Freitas

Executive Director