Sturgeon recovery plan released

BOISE – Montana’s Libby Dam may release water in excess of its powerhouse capacity to help save the endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon, according to a new federal plan for recovering one of the oldest fish in North America.

But the “biological opinion” released Thursday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not require the excess flows, does not specify exactly when or how the dam would spill the additional water and concedes the increase in river depth and velocity may not ultimately improve spawning conditions for the estimated 500 remaining wild sturgeon downstream.

The lack of specific steps for recovery drew criticism from conservation groups that have successfully sued the federal government for failing to do enough to save the fish, which are expected to dwindle to less than 50 by 2030.

“There’s just an incredible amount of uncertainty in what they are proposing,” said Noah Greenwald of Portland, Ore., a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued the agency and the Army Corps of Engineers for failing to halt the steady population decline of the sturgeon, declared an endangered species in 1994.

The new document is the third attempt at a recovery plan by the federal government since 1995. It concludes that the operating plan proposed by the Bonneville Power Administration and the corps for the dam 17 miles upstream from the town of Libby will continue to put the huge prehistoric fish in jeopardy of extinction.

The fish, which do not reach sexual maturity until age 30, have not successfully reproduced in the wild since the dam began operating in 1974. The species – which can live 100 years, grow to be 19 feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds – is only found in a 167-mile stretch of the Kootenai River, from Kootenai Falls, Mont., below Libby Dam, at the outflow from British Columbia’s Kootenay Lake.