Another chance for wildlife near Mono Lake

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun returns to the Mono Lake area and discovers that wildlife is on the rebound in Rush Creek, a major tributary and "the focus of an agonizingly complex and decades-long effort to heal a vast wilderness devastated by Los Angeles' insatiable thirst."

Now, 14 years after the city was ordered to reduce the quantity of tributary water it had been diverting into the Los Angeles aqueduct since 1941, Rush Creek has among the highest concentrations of yellow warblers in California -- roughly three pairs per 2 1/2 acres.

"Restrict grazing and bring back the water and things really start hopping," said field biologist Chris McCreedy.

That's the good news. Orchestrating the restoration continues to be a challenging process for the Mono Lake Committee, a nonprofit group of environmentalists and concerned citizens organized in 1978 to save and protect a bowl-shaped ecosystem roughly half the size of Rhode Island.

Nonetheless, Geoffrey McQuilkin, executive director of the 16,000-member group, said he is often asked, "Why is the Mono Lake Committee still around? You got the water you needed years ago. Isn't Mono Lake saved?" His stock response: "We still have a long way to go."

Photo: Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Brien Comerford]

We should all hope that Mono Lake becomes ecologically pristine and a haven teeming with wildlife.