Inyo County Visitors Guide - 12th Edition

commendation of the work done on the lake by several local conservationists, who have been documenting the lake’s bird populations for decades and advocating for the birds and the habitats that sustain them. Tom and Jo Heindel, of Big Pine, have been watching the lake and the birds since coming to the area in 1972. They are compiling a survey of every species of bird to visit Inyo County in the last 150 years. Mike Prather, of Lone Pine, got his first look at the birds on Owens Lake in 1985. Since then he has researched the bird activity on the lake and worked with all the groups involved in the lake’s revival, from the State of California to duck hunters to the Great Basin Air Pollution District to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. In recent years, the West’s saline lakes, such as Owens Lake and the Great Salt Lake, have become important destinations for migratory birds as other lakes and wetlands have disappeared. The next threatened lake, according to conservationists and the Audubon Society, is the rapidly shrinking Salton Sea. That huge inland lake has been in decline for years and has been targeted for rehabilitation. The turnaround at the Owens Lake could provide a template for the Salton Sea and other western lakes, the Audubon noted. Rob Clay, the director of the shorebird reserve network, noted that the years of work to bring bird life back to the lake was an example of how human welfare and conservation can be linked to create positive results for local residents and the environment. Owens Valley residents are familiar with the story of the lake’s new life. The lake dried up in the 1920s because the Owens River, which used to feed the lake, was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, leaving the lake to slowly dry up. After a number of lawsuits and a resulting court order, in 2001 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began a massive, landscape- scale project to reduce the billowing dust that came off the lake. That project included planting vegetation or covering dust-generating areas with gravel or using shallow flooding to stop the dust. The shallow flooding almost immediately started attracting birds. Eventually, about 55 square miles of the lakebed, or about half of the dry lake, had received some sort of dust “treatment.” After spending about $2 billion on the dust control project, the amount of dust coming of the lake had been reduced by 95 percent. And the birds have returned. INYO COUNTY • 12th Edition 11 Some of the participants on the Owens Lake during the annual Owens Lake Bird Festival. PHTOT COURTSEY BEN WICKMAN, FRIENDS OF THE INYO Owens Lake Continued from page 10