East of the Caspian Sea, astride the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, lies an immense saline lake—the Aral Sea. Fed by meltwaters of high glaciers and snowfields in the lofty Hindu Kush, Pamir, and Tien Shan Ranges, the lake endured through thousands of years as an oasis for terrestrial and aquatic wildlife deep in the heart of the central Asian desert. But in the last 50 years, the Aral Sea, once larger than Lake Huron, has shrunk to a shadow of its former extent. The volume of its waters has decreased by more than two-thirds, and its salinity has increased from 1 percent to over 3 percent, making it more salty than sea water. Twenty of the 24 fish species native to the lake have disappeared. Its catch of commercial fish, which once supplied 10 percent of the total for the Soviet Union, has dwindled to zero. The deltas of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which enter the south and east sides of the lake, were islands of great ecological diversity, teeming with f