Green grass with fluffy seed heads lines the shore of a lake, tufa formations are in the water offshore.

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Mono Lake 2025–2026 lake level forecast report

Each spring the Mono Lake Committee’s team of Mono Basin modelers and hydrology experts uses the lake level on April 1 together with the Mono Basin snowpack numbers and similar-year hydrological statistical data to produce the Mono Lake Committee lake…

South Tufa for sale?

Update: Your calls made an impact! On June 24, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that the provision to sell off millions of acres of public land in the budget reconciliation bill must be taken out. Thank you Mono Lake Committee members…

Federal downsizing, local consequences

Mono Basin and Eastern Sierra’s vast public lands lose federal employees and essential services Earlier this year the Trump Administration slashed staffing of federal agencies, including those that manage federal lands around the country and in California and the Eastern…

Mono Lake may be losing its California Gulls

Continuing DWP water diversions and decades of low lake levels causing harm For centuries California Gulls have migrated east across the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada to nest at Mono Lake. Their graceful, raucous, and quirky presence is a distinct…

Hap Dunning, champion of the Public Trust

In March, the Mono Lake community lost Harrison “Hap” C. Dunning—a renowned legal scholar and professor, steadfast advocate of the Public Trust, and insightful thinker who sought a balanced and sustainable approach to water rights law. Starting in the 1970s,…

LA Times’ Sammy Roth ponders Mono Lake’s plight

“I realized I had been drinking this water my whole life,” writes Sammy Roth, while standing at the Grant Lake Reservoir above Rush Creek, in his recent edition of the Los Angeles Times Boiling Point newsletter. We highly recommend giving…

An update about the Inn Fire near Mono Lake

The Inn Fire near Mono Lake is now 70% contained at 728 acres in size thanks to the diligent efforts of more than 500 fire personnel who responded quickly after it ignited last Thursday, May 22 at 3:30pm. The cause…

Summer 2025 Mono Lake Newsletter

I am noticing California Gulls differently this year. Their raucous calls are a sound of summer that always makes me smile. I love their bold manners and handsome white-and-gray plumage that gets messy as they forage for food until they…