Audubon’s Assessment for a Resilient Great Salt Lake

A healthy network of saline lakes in the Western United States is crucial to the survival and wellbeing of millions of waterbirds that depend on these ecosystems for nesting, breeding, refueling, and rest. Great Salt Lake is an irreplaceable cornerstone of this network. As one of the largest saline lakes in the Western Hemisphere, the Great Salt Lake ecosystem supports approximately 12 million birds annually and hosts globally significant populations. Increasing water diversion, development, and climate stressors threaten the system’s resilience and directly impact habitat quality and availability for waterbirds. The challenges facing Great Salt Lake are vast and these converging threats create an imperative for strategic habitat prioritization. 

The Great Salt Lake Birds and Habitat Assessment (the Assessment) is a science-based analysis designed to inform conservation strategies across the Great Salt Lake watershed and support the National Audubon Society’s strategic priorities, with its core goal focusing on protecting birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. Developed by Audubon’s team of scientists, with input from habitat and water experts, this effort integrates habitat suitability, climate projection, and human modification data into a unified, spatial framework that identifies priority conservation areas for waterbirds. 

“Great Salt Lake is one of the most important remaining strongholds for migratory birds as they make their hemispheric journeys along the Pacific Flyway,” said Marshall Johnson, Chief Conservation Officer for National Audubon Society. “This assessment contributes directly to Audubon’s broader work to bend the bird curve and provides valuable insight to our partners—water and wetland managers, partner conservation groups, and policymakers—a shared, science-based framework for protecting Great Salt Lake habitats and water resources.”   

The Assessment utilizes two analyses: an Aviation Prioritization Analysis and a Hydrological Inflows Analysis. 

The Avian Prioritization Analysis uses a habitat prioritization model to evaluate Audubon’s Flight Plan indicator waterbird species across all seasons. Audubon scientists conducted a series of optimization analyses to identify priority areas using Zonation Conservation Planning software. Analyses were conducted for both present and midcentury (year 2025) timesteps based on focal bird suitability and relative abundance using the methods described in Deluca et al. (2023). The features being optimized are listed on the left side of each box and include present and future habitat and climate suitability models for the breeding and nonbreeding seasons (Wilsey et al. 2019), as well as relative abundance models for fall and spring migration seasons (Fink et al. 2024, Meehan et al. 2022), for all indicator species in all seasons in which they are present in the watershed. The right side of each box indicates the landscape degradation attributes the model aims to avoid.  

Additionally, as part of this Assessment, Audubon utilized a hydrologic model that depicts potential contributions to Great Salt Lake from upstream wetlands and flood-irrigated agricultural lands to identify opportunities for protection of flows to Great Salt Lake and wetlands and water resource management. The Assessment illustrates how the Great Salt Lake’s mosaic of interconnected habitats across the watershed is essential for maintaining the region’s exceptional waterbird diversity and abundance.    

_{^{DeLuca, W. V., Seavy, N. E., Grand, J., Velásquez-Tibatá, J., Taylor, L., Bowler, C., Deppe, J. L., Knight, E. J., Lentijo, G. M., Meehan, T. D., Michel, N. L., Saunders, S. P., Schillerstrom, N., Smith, M. A., Witko, C., & Wilsey, C. B. (2023). A framework for linking hemispheric, full annual cycle prioritizations to local conservation actions for migratory birds. Conservation Science and Practice, 5(8), e12975. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12975}} 

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 _{^{Meehan, T.D., Saunders, S.P., DeLuca, W.V., Michel, N.L., Grand, J., Deppe, J.L., Jimenez, M.F., Knight, E.J., Seavy, N.E., Smith, M.A., Taylor, L., Witko, C., Akresh, M.E., Barber, D.R., Bayne, E.M., Beasley, J.C., Belant, J.L., Bierregaard, R.O., Bildstein, K.L., Boves, T.J., Brzorad, J.N., Campbell, S.P., Celis-Murillo, A., Cooke, H.A., Domenech, R., Goodrich, L., Gow, E.A., Haines, A., Hallworth, M.T., Hill, J.M., Holland, A.E., Jennings, S., Kays, R., King, D.T., Mackenzie, S.A., Marra, P.P., McCabe, R.A., McFarland, K.P., McGrady, M.J., Melcer Jr, R., Norris, D.R., Norvell, R.E., Rhodes Jr, O.E., Rimmer, C.C., Scarpignato, A.L., Shreading, A., Watson, J.L., & Wilsey, C.B., 2022. Integrating data types to estimate spatial patterns of avian migration across the Western Hemisphere. Ecological Applications, 32(7), e2679. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2679}} 

 _{^{Wilsey, C., Bateman, B., Taylor, L., Wu, J. X., LeBaron, G., Shepherd, R., Koseff, C., Friedman, S., & Stone, R. (2019). Survival by degrees: 389 bird species on the brink. National Audubon Society, New York, New York, USA. https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees}}