The 6th Extinction Read Free

before one last unscientific thought.
    God help me . . .

1
    April 27, 6:55 P . M . PDT
Mono Lake, California
    “Looks like the surface of Mars.”
    Jenna Beck smiled to herself at hearing this most common description of Mono Lake from yet another tourist. As the day’s last group of visitors took their final snapshots, she waited beside her white Ford F-150 pickup, the truck’s front doors emblazoned with the star of the California State Park Rangers.
    Tugging the stiff brim of her hat lower, she stared toward the sun. Though nightfall was an hour away, the slanting light had transformed the lake into a pearlescent mirror of blues and greens. Towering stalagmites of craggy limestone, called tufa, spread outward like a petrified forest along this southern edge of the lake and out into the waters.
    It certainly appeared to be an otherworldly landscape—but definitely not Mars. She slapped at her arm, squashing a mosquito, proving life still thrived despite the barren beauty of the basin.
    At the noise, the group’s tour guide—an older woman named Hattie—glanced in her direction and offered a sympathetic smile, but she also clearly took this as a signal to wind up her talk. Hattie was native Kutzadika’a, of the northern Paiute people. In her mid-seventies, she knew more about the lake and its history than anyone in the basin.
    “The lake,” Hattie continued, “is said to be 760,000 years old, but some scientists believe it might be as old as three million, making it one of the oldest lakes in the United States. And while the lake is seventy square miles in area, at its deepest it is barely over a hundred feet deep. It’s fed by a handful of bubbling springs and creeks, but it has no outflow, relying only on evaporation during the hot summer days. That’s why the lake is three times as salty as the ocean and has a pH of 10, almost as alkaline as household lye.”
    A Spanish tourist grimaced and asked in halting English. “Does anything live in this lago . . . in this lake?”
    “No fish, if that’s what you were thinking, but there is life.” Hattie motioned to Jenna, knowing such knowledge was her specialty.
    Jenna cleared her throat and crossed through the cluster of a dozen tourists: half Americans, the others a mix of Europeans. Situated between Yosemite National Park and the neighboring ghost towns of Bodie State Historic Park, the lake drew a surprising number of foreign visitors.
    “Life always finds a way to fill any environmental niche,” Jenna began. “And Mono Lake is no exception. Despite its inhospitable chemistry of chlorides, sulfates, and arsenic, it has a very rich and complex ecosystem, one that we are trying to preserve through our conservation efforts here.”
    Jenna knelt at the shoreline. “Life at the lake starts with the winter bloom of a unique brine-tolerant algae. In fact, if you’d come here in March, you’d have found the lake as green as pea soup.”
    “Why isn’t it green now?” a young father asked, resting a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
    “That’s because of the tiny brine shrimp that live here. They’re barely bigger than a grain of rice and consume all that algae. Then the shrimps serve to feed the lake’s most ubiquitous hunter.”
    Still kneeling at the water’s edge, she waved a hand along the shore’s edge, stirring a floating carpet of blackflies. They rose up in a cloud of buzzing complaint.
    “Sick,” said a sullen redheaded teenager as he stepped closer to get a better view.
    “Don’t worry. They’re not biting flies.” Jenna motioned a young boy of eight or nine to her side. “But they are creative little hunters. Come see.”
    The boy timidly came forward, followed by his parents and the other tourists. She patted the ground next to her, getting the boy to crouch, then pointed to the shallows of the lakebed, where several flies scurried underwater, encased within little silvery bubbles of air.
    “It looks like they’re scuba