Collapse of Utah’s Great Salt Lake is ‘so close you can feel it’

Standing at the edge of the Great Salt Lake, it’s easy to imagine what the Earth looked like long before humans ever got here. It is a primordial place, flattened by wind and water. But decades of drought and overuse have pushed it to the brink.

Along the shrinking shoreline, migratory birds have vanished, and people in nearby cities are breathing toxic dust whipped up from the exposed lakebed.

“I have seen her — the lake — in the good times and the bad times, and right now she’s on life support,” says Darren Parry, a former chairman of the Northwest Band of Shoshone. “I feel helpless to do anything about it.”