Near the mouth of the Bear River, before it empties into the Great Salt Lake, visitors will find an oasis. On the broad plain west of I-15 the river slows, its course a squiggle. Here water spills between man-made rectangular impoundments, the surfaces so still they mirror the sky. Only mallards and duck hunters break the illusion.
This is Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, a 77,102-acre desert wetland established as a bird sanctuary by Congress in 1928. About 210 bird species have been spotted at the refuge, which is a critical breeding, nesting, or foraging site for the Great American Flyway, including species like the long-billed curlew, American white pelican, and white-faced ibis.
Overseeing this expanse is Erin Holmes, manager of the refuge for two and a half years. Holmes arrived at her post after a stint at Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, outside of Portland, Oregon. Moving from the water-sensitive Pacific Northwest to the arid Wasatch Front delivered an initial culture shock.
“The first thing I noticed that people think differently was the perfect green lawns,” she said. The move happened early in the summer. “It’s 104 degrees,” she recalled thinking. “Why are you watering the lawns?”
Holmes, wearing hawk earrings as we spoke, is fiercely proud of the national wildlife refuge system and the species it shelters. One morning at the Bear River refuge she saw what appeared to be a rapidly shifting cloud on the horizon. After a moment she realized it was a flock of swans, murmurating. So many bird species visit Bear River — shorebirds in July and August, avocets and grebes in October, tundra swans and trumpeter swans in mid-November — that the wetlands resound with their movements. The video playing on loop in the visitor center is titled Wings of Thunder.
Having spent her career at these places, Holmes knows what makes the system tick.
“Every refuge is about water,” she said.
If the Bear River Development proceeds, it will place more stress on bird habitat in the region. The river provides more than half of the surface inflow to the Great Salt Lake. The state feasibility study estimated that Great Salt Lake levels would decline by 8 to 14 inches because of the project.
The pressure, though extreme this year, has been slowly building. In 2019, the Utah Legislature ordered a report on actions that could help preserve the Great Salt Lake and its wetlands. The report was filed in December 2020. It recommended many of the conservation projects that water districts and cities are now considering: expanded metering of residential irrigation water, better data collection to understand how water is being used, bringing land-use planners and water providers together, reducing lawn sizes. Completing these, the report said, could “delay or forestall major public water development projects in the Bear River and elsewhere.” Delaying or forestalling those projects would “benefit lake levels and save taxpayer money.”
Even this year, before any Bear River diversion, water at the refuge was scarce. Because of the drought, Holmes and her staff had to be discerning with limited supplies. Not all the impoundments could be filled. Those that weren’t were left dry.
“We weren’t able to provide as much habitat,” Holmes explained, redwing blackbirds trilling in the marsh behind her. “Birds can fly though, and they move to another place.” But with the drying of the Great Salt Lake, options are limited. “My concern is that there are not many places to go. No water equals no habitat.”
In Whites Valley, Robert Child is attuned to these discussions, but at a distance. He’s seen technicians at the valley mouth, testing the stability of the slopes and the durability of the geology to the forces that a dam would exert.
If the reservoir were to be built in the valley, relatively few households would be disturbed. But it would end a way of life. Fields would be submerged. Herding would probably come to a halt. Child said you couldn’t graze sheep around the perimeter of the reservoir because they’d bury themselves in the mud. All in all, he questions the wisdom of the project.
“Why come up and ruin this area for people in Salt Lake?” Child asks. “Ruin your own ground.”
Soothing sentiments like these will be part of the political dance around the Bear River. Rural areas across the American West, from Owens Valley in California to Great Basin communities in Nevada, have revolted, sometimes successfully, against outsiders attempting to move water to distant cities. Population growth and a warming climate will continue to stoke those debates along the Wasatch Front as the region figures out how to live with more people.