Dan Strauch

Legislative Advocate for Utah Audubon Council

Salt Lake City, UT

October 11, 2024

The sun pierces our skin. It’s fourteen degrees above average temperatures as we sit along the salty shores of Antelope Island. Perched in the southeastern corner of the Great Salt Lake, Antelope Island is the center of the lake’s universe. Indigenous creation stories abound on these shores.

A rectangle, a large oval, and two zig-zagging lines appear on a stark white poster board. Dan Strauch, Legislative Advocate for the Utah Audubon Council, furiously scribbles a map of Utah before our eyes. The map’s simplicity quickly complicates as he draws a railroad causeway across the Great Salt Lake’s length. The concrete causeway artificially divides the lake’s salinity. The top half, 25% salt, no longer supports life. Despite the bottom half being four times saltier than the ocean, brine shrimp, nematodes, and flies still flourish. 

Ten million birds rely upon Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Whether staying as a full-time resident or just passing through, the lake’s surrounding wetlands are an oasis amidst a desolate desert. The Eared Grebe, Wilson’s Phalarope, and Red-necked Phalarope are the only bird species adapted to survive in the lake’s waters. Such saline conditions are nearly impossible to thrive in, yet they persist.

Dan, an avid birder of twenty-plus years, approaches his policy advocacy as if looking through a pair of birding binoculars. Birds are bellwethers, indicators of environmental stress. When he noticed Wilson’s Phalaropes on the decline, he spoke up. Alongside the Utah Audubon Council, he filed to list them as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. 

The lake currently sits at 4,195 feet above sea level, just three feet short of the determined “healthy level.” Although the Wilson’s Phalarope has yet to be recognized as endangered, the petition is a stepping stone to greater awareness surrounding the dire state of terminal lakes. The Great Salt Lake, and its dear bird kin, will rise again.

by Ava Frans