It offers meals and rest to millions of migrating birds. It provides duck hunters a playground for their pastime each fall and has gawk-appeal for observers as far away as space.

And, with all of these forces pulling on it, the lake is being "piece-mealed to death," says Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

On Monday, Huntsman announced a new panel to help decide how to manage the lake for future generations. The 12-person Great Salt Lake Advisory Council is due to report to Huntsman by the year's end.

"Whatever happens [with the lake] needs to be carefully analyzed," said the Republican governor.

"We have an amazing resource in the Great Salt Lake that offers a very diverse set of opportunities for our citizens," he said. "This Great Salt Lake Council is a unique collection of people who now need to chart a course for how to best utilize all the features of the lake."

The governor announced the long-sought panel during the first stop in his weeklong rural road tour of Utah. He also planned a tour of a Great Salt Lake mineral mining operation and dairy farms in Box Elder County.

As he announced the panel, sought for years by the lake's fans, nine of the 12 council members stood behind him. They represent such organizations as the Nature Conservancy, the Salt Lake City planning office, the South Davis County sewer district, the brine-shrimp industry and Kaysville Mayor Neka Roundy.

"It's an icon," said Roundy. "It's on everyone's map. It's ours."

She told stories of wanting, as a child, to float in it and noted that her father once swam it from Black Rock on the south shore to Antelope Island.

For all of the intrigue it inspires, the lake has seen little management. The Utah Water Quality Board is just now considering the first water-quality standard for the lake, a limit on the amount of selenium permitted in the lake's southwest bay. Conservationists have criticized plans for oil drilling near the earthwork sculpture Spiral Jetty in the north.

State Sen. Dan Eastman is one of two lawmakers on the panel.

"We're just going to take an inventory of what we have here," said the Bountiful Republican.

"The question is, what value do we have here? We might be surprised with what we find out."

fahys@sltrib.com

A look at the lake

* The Great Salt Lake is five times saltier than ocean water.

* Antelope Island is the largest of 10 islands in the Great Salt Lake, the fourth-largest terminal lake in the world.

* The bison on the island, originally introduced in 1893, now number 720.

* The state purchased its first parcel of Antelope Island in 1969 and bought the remaining 26,022 acres in 1981.

* The Great Salt Lake covers about 1,700 square miles, although it can be nearly half that size during a drought and double it in wet periods.