Executive Director

Mono Lake Committee

Bio:

Geoffrey McQuilkin became a Mono Lake Committee member in fifth grade and his enthusiasm for Mono Lake has never waned. He has worked for the nonprofit Mono Lake Committee for over twenty years, including the past decade as Executive Director, giving him the chance to be involved with all aspects of the citizen group’s protection, restoration, education, and science programs. He can be found wherever Mono Lake advocacy is needed, from the lake’s salty shores to Los Angeles to Sacramento. A graduate of Harvard in the History of Science, Geoff lives at Mono Lake with his wife and three daughters.

Title: Lessons From a Low Mono Lake: Delivering Protection Requires Persistence

Abstract: Mono Lake, the California sister to Great Salt Lake, has suffered from decades of excessive diversion of its tributary streams by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The diversions caused a 45-foot decline in lake level, cutting the lake volume in half and generating numerous impacts including salinity increase that threatens ecosystem viability and food supply for millions of migratory birds, land bridging exposing nesting islands to predators, and hazardous dust storms due to lakebed exposure.

Citizen advocacy and landmark legal precedents led to a major public trust water rights protection action in 1994. However, 28 years later, the artificially low lake has not recovered on the schedule expected and has only risen 30% of the way to the mandated sustainable level. Ongoing advocacy by lake supporters and adaptive management of stream diversion rules by regulatory agencies is necessary to raise the lake and build the resiliency Mono Lake needs to survive in the era of climate change.