With last breaths

Lake Urmia is one of the largest saltwater lakes in the world that it is currently endangered and will probably cease to exist in the near future.

Lake Urmia, in northwest Iran, once the largest lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth, is rapidly losing water and drying up. It was twice the size of Luxembourg in the 1990s, but intensified droughts and elevated summer temperatures have sped up evaporation. In addition, human factors such as building dams to store water for irrigation, increasing groundwater use by established deeper illegal wells for agricultural irrigation and a 15-kilometer-long causeway that cuts the lake in two, built in 2008, were the important factors for drying.
Lake Urmia has lost most of its water surface area in the last 2 decades. In 2015, estimates from satellite imagery showed that the lake had lost about 88 percent of its size between 2006 and 2015. By late 2017, the lake had shrunk to 10% of its former size. Currently, only 5% of the lake's water remains.
The complete loss of this lake would be tragic in many ways, from the flamingos who feed on the unique crustaceans that live in the saline waters, to the loss of biodiverse wetlands, to the damage to agriculture in the basin. The lake’s basin is the heart of the region’s agriculture and it has population of more than 10 million. If the lake dries up, not only does it damage the residents but also it would affect people living in the span of 500 km from Urmia Lake in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Iran.
In addition, the mineral crust and bottom sediments contain not only salt, but heavy toxic metals used in industry and toxic agricultural substances. As the lakebed is exposed and desiccated, these may become airborne and pose a risk to the environment and people.