SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — About 120 years ago, journalists reported from downtown Salt Lake City that there were so many campfires from duck hunters that it appeared like a prairie fire stretching from Murray to the Great Salt Lake.
According to Jack Ray, president of the Utah Waterfowl Association, “duck fever” was fervent in Utah at the end of the 19th century. He said the Salt Lake Herald wrote at the time that the demand for chicken would dry up during the hunting season — which stretches from October to January.
Duck hunters take media and state officials on a tour of the Rudy Duck Hunting Club’s Great Salt Lake property on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.
“There was a huge interest in waterfowl hunting, and so people started acquiring wetlands around Great Salt Lake. When they did that, perhaps what they didn’t realize they were doing is … preserving this marsh ecosystem for Great Salt Lake,” Ray said.
These private lands became wetland preserves at a time when people were draining wetlands across the country. While these land purchases preserved thousands of acres of wetlands near the Great Salt Lake, the marshes further south near Murray were not so lucky.
“This is it. This is the bare bones,” Ray said. “We’re down to really what we need to preserve the South Shore ecosystem. If places like this go down, it collapses.”
Duck hunters’ land purchases helped save the Great Salt Lake wetlands a century ago, and experts say saving them today might require a similar approach — but this time, it’s not just up to the hunters.
Why are the wetlands at risk?
For more than 100 years, there have been pressures to drain or convert private wetlands into something else. Current-day pressures come from the rapid expansion of Utah’s population and economic needs.
A bird flies over the Great Salt Lake as the water ripples from nearby duck hunter boats.Birds fly above the wetlands on the southeast side of the Great Salt Lake on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.Bird flies above the wetlands on the southeast side of the Great Salt Lake on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.A bridge locate on the Rudy Duck Hunting Club property of the Great Salt Lake wetlands.Plants line the Great Salt Lake.
Ben Hart, the executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, is in some ways the face of economic development in the state of Utah as the port authority is working on 12 development projects statewide.
As such, he says he is the target of a lot of criticism — including a recent lawsuit claiming the UIPA is threatening the wetlands.
“The port does get a little bit sensitive when people say that we’re not doing anything and that we’re contributing to part of the problem, that’s absolutely not correct. We want to be part of the solution,” Hart said.
The UIPA recently announced an upcoming $2.5 million grant to help protect the Great Salt Lake, one payment of what Hart says will be the first of many over the next two decades.
He said the port authority plans to contribute a minimum of $20 million to create a buffer zone between development and sensitive ecological areas by purchasing land and dedicating it to this cause.
“The reality is we can’t continue to grow the way that we have, we have to be smarter,” Hart said. “We believe, that we can create that better balance through proactive planning and these types of mitigation efforts.”
What is being done to save the wetlands
While the UIPA is donating funds to help preserve the wetlands, they said they are leaving the actual preservation to the experts.
People like Justin Dolling, president of the Rudy Duck Hunting Club and retired state waterfowl biologist, who funnels water into the club from the Jordan River and North Point Canal to create “playas” — a critical migratory and nesting habitat.
The Rudy Duck Hunting Club sits on the southeast side of the Great Salt Lake and is an example of private land that was purchased for duck hunting more than 115 years ago.
Ray said there is an area on the property called Elbow Lake that has been a favorite hunting spot for more than a century. He said the ducks keep coming back to the area which “says something that we haven’t screwed things up out here. That we’ve done it right,” Ray said.
Small properties belonging to local duck hunters line the shore on the southeast side of the Great Salt Lake. The property belongs to the Rudy Duck Hunting Club.
While Ray said the $2.5 million donation is “critically important,” he added that preserving the wetlands will require more contributions from different sources. Hart said it will take “everyone working together” and doing their part to conserve the area.
Several club members told ABC4 that no one cares about the land more than they do, as they spend much of the duck hunting season on the wetlands and in small residences on the water.
The duck hunters — along with Ray and Hart — are hoping to share the beauty of the region with others in an effort to help people see what it is that needs preserving.
“As the people who are out here and who have been out here sometimes for generations, we feel as though this is a stewardship that has been bequeathed to us by prior generations,” Ray said. “It’s something that we have received … and that we want to pass over to the future for future generations for a century or longer to come.”