Located about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the Salton Sea is an ancestral lake basin with no recent natural water sources that was accidentally flooded in the early 1900s. As the 20th century unfolded it became a prime resting place for migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway that extends from Alaska to Patagonia, and a major wildlife refuge since more than 90 percent of California wetlands have been drained for human development. Now more than 400 bird species use the Salton Sea to rest, breed, or forage.

But the Salton Sea has been receding fast since the largest agricultural-to-urban water transfer in the nation went into effect more than a decade ago. Rich in salt from native sources and agricultural runoff, the lake’s salinity has recently ballooned due to evaporation and decreasing water inflows to the point that only tilapia fish has been able to endure.

Experts have long said that if left unattended, the lake will become too salty even for tilapia to survive, which means birds would lose a major food source. “We are at 57 to 58 parts [of salt] per thousand right now,” Bruce Wilcox, assistant secretary for Salton Sea policy, told ThinkProgress earlier this year. “Once we get to sixty parts or thereabout, we think [the tilapia] reproduction will stop.”….More Here