Great Salt Lake

Great Salt Lake is an endorheic saline lake in northern Utah, much saltier than the ocean. It is the remnant of the prehistoric pluvial Lake Bonneville in the Great Basin. It covers an area of around 1,700 square miles, but this is subject to substantial fluctuations. The lake has very high salinity because the natural evaporation rate exceeds the supply of water from the three feeder rivers, which deposit around 1.1 million tons of minerals in it each year. It has no outlet to the sea.

Pink Floyd the flamingo

As of 2005, a solitary Chilean flamingo lives at the Great Salt Lake named Pink Floyd. It escaped Salt Lake City's Tracy Aviary in 1985, and now lives in the wild eating brine shrimp and socializing with seagulls and swans. Utah residents have suggested petitioning the state to release more flamingos in an effort to keep Floyd company and as a possible tourist attraction. Wildlife biologists have resisted these efforts, saying that deliberate introduction of a non-native species would be ecologically unsound and might have detrimental consequences. See Christian Science Monitor article

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~