High Times For Sturgeon Flooded Rivers Egg On Both Giant Fish, Research Program

Hand over hand, Gretchen Kruse hauled up a soggy rope from the Kootenai River and dragged into the boat a dripping, steel-framed furnace filter.

The fisheries technician hunched over the glistening fibers, inspecting every inch, sorting through strands of grass and tiny pebbles to find the future of the endangered white sturgeon.

“I found four!” she whooped, cupping the yellow-and-green sturgeon eggs in her palm.

This is about the only kind of sturgeon fishing that goes on any more on the Kootenai River. But Kruse isn’t in the caviar business - she’s a biologist.

What once was an unforgettable sportfishery has been relegated to scientific sampling for data collection and research.

This year, biologists are finding more eggs than ever, thanks in part to higher river flows that help sturgeon spawn. The snowpack has been almost 200 percent of normal in some parts of the Kootenai River’s headwaters.

The intent of their research is to preserve a giant fish that dates to prehistoric times. One day, sturgeon fans hope, anglers can return to wrestling the sometimes 200-pound fish from the Kootenai River.

The fish was listed as endangered in 1994. Since then, even catch-and-release fishing for sturgeon has been illegal.

But sport-fishing isn’t the only reason to save the ancient fish.

“It’s an indicator species,” Kruse said. “If they go - they’re a pretty tough fish - then something’s wrong.”

Every day during spring spawning season, Kruse and colleagues check 100 “mats” for sturgeon eggs.

As of early last week, they had collected more than 240 eggs. They expect to gather more this season than any other since the Idaho Fish and Game Department started the program in 1991.

This spring has blessed the endangered fish with some of the best conditions for spawning since construction of Libby Dam in 1972. The generous spring runoff has forced the dam to release the maximum amount of water possible, increasing the flow downstream.

Sturgeon are prodded to spawn by high river flows. Yet high water has been rare since Libby Dam was built.

Over several years of testing, only 16 sturgeon have been captured that were spawned in the wild since 1972. All of those were hatched during high water years.

In the spring of 1995, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deliberately increased flows for the sturgeon, causing floods on a few hundred acres of cropland on the floodplain.

So when this spring’s runoff swamped almost 3,000 acres of wheat and barley fields near Bonners Ferry, some farmers cried foul, unaware that the rising river had natural, not man-made, causes.

“Though (flooding) this year was not caused by sturgeon recovery, we have sustained damage in the past,” said Dave Wattenbarger, Boundary County extension agent.

The farmers are keeping track of their financial losses but know they won’t be reimbursed by the federal government, he said.

“Most citizens of the community that have been here long enough to remember the sturgeon fishery do have mixed feelings about it, no doubt,” Wattenbarger said.

The resentment rises, however, when officials fail to take into consideration the impact of rescuing fish on the local economy.

Still, even with this year’s high runoff, the flows on the Kootenai River are no match for high water before the dam was built.

The dam has made agricultural use of the Kootenai Flats area much more productive, said Wayne Wagner, water manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Flooding was more frequent before the dam provided some control.

In some years of heavy runoff prior to construction of the dam, the Kootenai River reached flows of 100,000 cubic feet per second. After the dam was built, downstream flows have ranged from 4,000 cfs to a high of 57,000 cfs. The maximum the dam can release is about 26,000 cfs.

During this spring’s runoff, flows reached 46,000 cfs, about half from tributaries below the dam.

Biologists would like to see flows of 50,000 cfs during the spring spawning season. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to provide enough water for 35,000 cfs near Bonners Ferry. Even that amount can flood farmland.

In addition to the farmers and the sturgeon biologists, the dam operators have to answer to users of Lake Koocanusa - the reservoir behind Libby Dam - and power utilities.

“We’re in a glass bowl,” Wagner said. “Everyone’s looking at us.”

Adjustments in releases from the dam to mimic the natural river flows are part of the long-term plan to save the sturgeon.

Finding just the right flows and temperatures are part of the continuing research on the river. Kruse and others are measuring the river flows where eggs have been found and looking for newly hatched fish.

While they’re heartened by the numbers of eggs they’re collecting, they think the eggs should be further upstream, where the river bottom is clean gravel.

Most eggs still are found downstream of Bonners Ferry, in reaches plagued with a silty bottom that tends to swamp and bury eggs.

They have found radio-tagged fish upstream, however, which is a rare and hopeful sign.

“They may have had spawning at Bonners Ferry and we just haven’t detected it,” said Vaughn Paragamian, head biologist for the Idaho Fish and Game’s sturgeon program. “In general, it’s been a good year for sturgeon.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: REPORT TO BE RELEASED The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release the Kootenai River white sturgeon draft recovery plan for public comment later this week. The plan was put together during the last two years by a team of biologists from Idaho and Montana, Canadian and U.S. government agencies, the Kootenai Tribe, and the Bonneville Power Administration.