Antelope Island: Is This Seemingly Bleak Environment Nature’s Survival Garden?

Text by Gayil Nalls
Photographs and videos by Fiona Kane

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Antelope Island is rich in halophytes and other naturally salt-tolerant plants; however, it is also part of the dying Great Salt Lake ecosystem that could collapse completely within five years according to a report by scientists at Bingham Young University. With sea level rise and natural disasters accelerating, saltwater intrusion is leaving land barren in many parts of the world. While trying to save the lake, shouldn’t we also be preparing for the future by saving the gene pool of natural halophytes this region has produced, and growing and crossbreeding them elsewhere?

This 28,000-acre island, surrounded by The Great Salt Lake, became Antelope Island State Park in 1981. It’s a desolate beauty, sacred to the regions’ Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Nations, and from its highest point, Frary Peak at 6,596 feet, a gorgeous sunset can be seen. The rocks on the island are some of the oldest in Utah at 1.7-billion-years-old, the same as the rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

“Being there”, photographer Fiona Kane said,” felt like a land before time, the way it sounded… the whirring silence, the color palette, and the way it smelled like salt and dried shrimp. I’m glad I captured these photos and videos, but to be honest, they pale in comparison to what it is like there, to be in such surreal and liminal place.”

Its namesake Pronghorn antelope are native to Utah and to the island where they roam with mule deer, bighorn sheep, and bison. These free-roaming bison graze across a landscape covered in wild plants such as Sagebrush and are descendants of wild bison that came to the island in 1893. There are also predators that include coyotes, bobcats, owls, hawks, falcons and more. How do they survive?

Antelope Island has enough marshes and freshwater springs to support wildlife, but the Great Salt Lake that surrounds it is drying up. The lake is what remains of the prehistoric Lake Bonneville, and is the largest saltwater lake in the western half of the planet. The water is beautiful and clear but the salinity levels have always been so high that only brine shrimp, brine flies, and algae survived. These species make up a unique and invaluable feeding ground, which millions of migrating birds flock to every year. People have come from all over the world to float or swim in the water, so dense it supports their body. The best place to enter the lake’s waters has always been from Antelope Island.

However, the lake is disappearing due to warmer temperatures and megadrought, a direct result of climate change. The condition of the lake is being further worsened by water use issues throughout the state such as the diversion of river water to meet the needs of rapid population growth. Furthermore, the state’s agricultural industry is requiring more water in order to save their crops which are also battling these challenging new weather conditions. An official in-depth assessment of the Great Salt Lake crisis has found that despite the health of the ecosystem and economics of the Lake, with urgent action, it can be restored. This would require strategic and rapid state action and policy changes such as new water use regulations and encouraging residents to use water more efficiently.

Aggressive restoration of the Lake is needed because of other potentially catastrophic developments. The low water levels result in higher concentrations of salt and minerals, too high for even the algae, plankton, and brine shrimp to survive. As the water evaporates, concentrations of cancer-causing and neurotoxic heavy metals and chemicals such as arsenic, lead and mercury are exposed on the lakebed and travel in the wind as toxic dust pollution. This dust exposure will have serious health implications on residents near and far. If things continue at the current pace the whole greater ecosystem could collapse and the lake could be gone in five years.

There could be further significant effects of the loss of The Great Salt Lake ecosystem that includes Antelope Island itself. In a world where only 2% of plants are halophytes, Antelope Island is a biodiverse vegetative goldmine of naturally salt tolerant plants that could be a survival garden for the future. This is an ecosystem of relatively rare, remarkable, plants that not only survive, but thrive and reproduce in extreme conditions due to their unique genetic make-up. Only a very small number of these plants are being propagated or have been domesticated. As climate change progresses and sea levels rise, saltwater infiltrates inland along coastal regions around the globe and makes coastline aquifers vulnerable. These halophyte plants might be the solution or contain a genetic solution for these changing landscapes; their genetic capacity can be utilized to adapt other plants and food crops. Even though saltwater agriculture has been studied by universities and some pilot projects, the threat to these plants in The Great Salt Lake will hopefully encourage more serious development in this field, and lead to safe ways for scaled commercialization and genomic research to grow crops in saline soil.

These ecologically valuable but underused plants are already being conserved as they are protected by the State Park Service, but they haven’t all been identified, and it is not known to what degree they have salinity tolerance. Given that the salinity level is increasing, and that there is a realistic threat of ecosystem collapse, this raises the question: are the current conservation efforts to maintain the plants in their natural surroundings enough to save these species and their distinctive properties, especially now considering how crucial they will be to combating the effects of climate change?

And will we save this natural wonder of the world, the Great Salt Lake?

Fiona Kane is a filmmaker, artist and conservationist located in New York and Los Angeles.

Gayil Nalls, PhD, is the founder and director of World Sensorium/Conservancy and editor of Plantings.

Sources

Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse.

A synthesized document for 2023 General Legislative Session. February 8, 2023

Antelope Island State Park Official Website

With thanks to Jeremy Shaw, Park Manager and Steven Bates, Wildlife Biologist Antelope Island State Park , Utah Department of Natural Resources Division of State Parks