Caroline Tracey: How this tiny bird could save salt lakes

The Wild with Chris Morgan

KUOW News and Information

Science, Nature

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Four times in the past decade Lake Abert has completely dried up, a barren lakebed encrusted with salt. Salt lakes are among the world's most threatened ecosystems. Lack of water could lead to many of these lakes permanently drying up in the American West.

But there is one tiny bird that could change all that. The Wilson’s Phalarope depends on salt lakes on their 6500-mile migration between North and South America. There is a movement to get the phalarope listed as a threatened species by the federal government as a way to protect the habitat they need to survive.

Caroline Tracey is an environment reporter who grew up in the American West - a place that flows through so much of her work. She recently signed a book deal for a memoir about her love of salt lakes - these often-ignored ecosystems that are crucial to the world’s water cycle, migratory bird populations, and human health.

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THE WILD is a production of KUOW, Chris Morgan Wildlife, and the NPR Network. This episode was produced by Matt Martin and edited by Jim Gates. THE WILD is hosted, produced and written by Chris Morgan. Fact checking by Apryle Craig. Our theme music is by Michael Parker.

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Transcript

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0:49.4	Imagine you're a fallerope, Wilson's fallerope. You are a very small light bird. You can
0:58.1	fit in the palm of a human hand and you weigh about the weight of two double A batteries.
1:05.0	You start your year at Lake Chaplin, a Salt Lake in Saskatchewan,
1:11.0	and there you lay your eggs and there you lay your eggs and then you fly to the North American West for the next stage of your migration when you'll go to a Salt Lake and eat a ton of food.
1:27.0	You decide you're going to go to Lake Abert in Oregon, which is the closest lake to there.
1:37.0	You're flying over the Oregon out back, over a lot of sagebrush and grass, ready to see a big blue glistening pool of water that is just buzzing with flies that you will chow down on for the next few weeks.
1:52.0	But when you arrive, instead of finding tons of water and
1:57.6	tons of prey, you find nothing but a salt crust and a bunch of mud.
2:04.2	The lake was gone.
2:05.8	All dried up.
2:07.8	Four times in the past decade, that's exactly what has happened at Lake Abbot,
	...

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