Utah’s Nice Salt Lake is the most important saltwater lake within the Western Hemisphere, stretching some 950 sq. miles, with its intensive wetlands offering refuge for greater than 10 million migratory birds. However upstream water withdrawals for agriculture are drastically decreasing the lake degree and elevating its salt content material, and one other main diversion mission is deliberate. Scientists worry the lake might quickly develop into too salty for the brine-fly larvae and adults on which lots of the chicken species rely.
“We have now such an enormous duty to make sure the lake’s survival,” filmmaker Jaxon Derow says, “not only for the Nice Salt Lake’s ecosystem, however for all of the ecosystems throughout the Western Hemisphere from which these birds come to feed and reproduce annually.”
To movie “Vanishing Oasis” Derow visited the lake’s Antelope Island in September of 2022, when the lake was then at its lowest degree on report. Drone pictures revealed huge expanses of uncovered lake mattress, which ship plumes of poisonous mud towards Salt Lake Metropolis. If the lake stays low, or drops additional, warns College of Utah scientist Kevin Perry, mud storms will develop into “extra frequent and extreme.”
Utah acquired a large quantity of snow final winter, which raised the lake greater than 4 toes. But when measures to revive water flowing to the lake should not taken, Perry says, “we might be on the cusp of a useless Nice Salt Lake once more in a few years.”
Concerning the Filmmaker: After graduating from New York Harbor Faculty and Northeastern College’s marine biology program, Jaxon Derow enrolled on the Nationwide Movie and Tv Faculty in Beaconsfield, U.Okay., the place he’s presently finishing the Directing and Producing Science and Pure Historical past course.
Concerning the Contest: Now in its tenth 12 months, the Yale Surroundings 360 Movie Contest honors the perfect environmental documentaries, with the goal of recognizing work that has not beforehand been broadly seen. This 12 months we acquired 582 submissions from 76 international locations throughout six continents, with the winners chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Kolbert, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, and e360’s govt editor Roger Cohn.