“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.
“Already, Great Salt Lake presents us with a chronicle of death foretold: the collapse of an entire salt desert ecosystem of reefs that foster the life cycle of brine flies and shrimp, which in turn support more than 10 million migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway.
“Great Salt Lake’s death and the death of the lives she sustains could become our death, too. The dry lake bed now exposed to the wind is laden with toxic elements, accumulated in the lake over decades. On any given day, dust devils are whipping up a storm in these hot spots, blowing mercury- and arsenic-laced winds through the Wasatch Front, where 2.6 million people dwell, with Salt Lake City at its center.”
- Terry Tempest Williams I am Haunted by What I Have Seen at Great Salt Lake, New York Times