Opinion: The seagulls once saved us. Will Utah care for them — and the dying Great Salt Lake?

In 1848, when the newly arrived Mormon pioneers were ready to harvest their first crop necessary for surviving the coming winter, millions of crickets descended on their fields and gardens, threatening the settlers’ survival. The pioneers responded immediately, doing everything in their power to fight the crickets: stomping on them, burying them in trenches and attempting to drive them away with smoke, fire and loud noises. But no matter how many crickets were destroyed, they kept coming in huge black waves.

Then, in what many considered a miracle, tens of thousands of seagulls from the Great Salt Lake descended on the landscape, devouring the invading insects and saving the harvest and the people. Towards the end of his life, church President Joseph F. Smith recalled how pioneers were “literally preserved from starvation by the welcome visits and persistent efforts in the destruction of the devouring hordes by these beautiful winged saviors.”

Since that historic time, Utahns have honored the seagull, erecting a monument to it on Temple Square in 1913 and making it the official state bird in 1955.

By an ironic turn of fate, today, because of the shrinking Great Salt Lake, it is the seagulls as well as the people who are in danger due to water diversion and drought.

The lake has lost two-thirds of its water and more than half of its surface area. A new scientific report predicts that within the next few years, the lake could reach a point of no return. The lake area, which includes 800 square miles of dry, exposed sediment, releases toxic dust laced with arsenic, mercury and other toxins into the air, which is breathed by every creature who lives in the area — and, if nothing is changed, every creature who will live here in the future. That means that our children and grandchildren and the generations who come after them will be victims of what one source has called “an environmental nuclear bomb.”

While some may consider that an exaggeration, consider the following:

• Pollution from the lake is currently causing significant increases in cardiac and lung disease, cancer and other deleterious diseases, as well as increases in premature births and deaths.
• More disturbing is the research predicting that unless the lake is saved, the entire populace living in proximity to the lake will lose an average of more than two years of longevity! Imagine all 2,800,000 people living along and just beyond the Wasatch Front losing an average of two years of life! That equals 5,600,000 lost years or 56,000 centuries of human life!
• The fallout from the present state of the lake is expected to cause billions of dollars in financial losses, including to tourism, tech, ski, health and other industries as well as to property values and population growth.

Put simply, if we don’t act, as the lake continues to dry up, it will increasingly poison our air, shorten our lives, devastate wildlife, negatively impact business and industry, and leave an irreversible scar on the landscape.

What can we do? According to Brigham Daniels, Director of the University of Utah’s Great Salt Lake Project, “The Great Salt Lake is really presenting a question to us: ‘Which future do we want?’ And because its challenges are caused, by and large, by people, we actually have an opportunity to navigate toward human-led solutions.”

Those solutions include water conservation, better water management, increasing water flow, community awareness and perhaps, especially, every citizen becoming engaged in some way, however modest, in helping to solve the problem.

Fortunately, as the seagulls once saved the people, the people now have the opportunity to save the seagulls (and other birds and living creatures) as well as themselves. One important difference: The seagulls saved the people based on instinct; we can actually choose whether to save the seagulls — and ourselves.

The pioneers once saw the gulls as heaven-sent. Perhaps that was true. But miracles don’t happen without faith, and faith without action is not really faith. July 24 is Pioneer Day. Whether you are a descendant of pioneers or not, whether you believe in miracles or not, believe you can make a difference and do something to save a lake whose future is critical to our future.