How Decades of Hard-Earned Protections and Restoration Reversed the Collapse of California’s Treasured Mono Lake

When Rose Nelson camped along lower Rush Creek in the summer of 2017, the water was flowing as high and fast as anyone could remember. The rumble and roar of the creek, she said, was the joyful sound of nature healing. “It was the first high runoff after a long drought,” said Nelson, now the education director for the Mono Lake Committee, a nonprofit based in Lee Vining, California.