Driving south from Utah, I take bits of historic Highway 66 and then skirt Joshua Tree National Park to cruise through little-known Box Canyon to Mecca, California. When the landscape opens up, I see the beautiful wreck of the Salton Sea, created by the collision of geology and bad luck. … Is the diminished sea worth saving? It’s too late to ask the question because, like the Great Salt Lake, the cost of not saving it is likely higher than the rescue. Like many invasive species around the West, there is no easy way to get rid of it. Yet most of its fish are already dead and migrating birds have little to eat. 
–Written by Dennis Hinkamp from Writers on the Range​