Stretching sturgeon’s fish tale

BONNERS FERRY, Idaho – Fewer than 500 white sturgeon are believed to be swimming the cool waters of the Kootenai River. But thousands of the young fish are spending their first months of life in a metal warehouse built just a stone’s throw from the river.

The eyelash-sized sturgeon are part of the Kootenai Tribe’s aggressive program to ensure the endangered fish don’t vanish from the planet. About eighteen months from now, when the fish are as long as a hammer handle and sport the beginnings of their tell-tale armor and sharklike tails, they’ll be returned to the river. Someday, they might grow as long as a car and heavier than a horse; Kootenai River white sturgeon are the continent’s largest freshwater fish species.

“When these guys mature, I’ll be dead,” hatchery technician Eric Wagner said, pointing at the fry.

But working with sturgeon requires a long-term view, Wagner explained. They’re living dinosaurs, after all, and have survived two major extinctions on the planet – one about 270 million years ago and another 65 million years ago. The dinosaurs died off, but not the sturgeon.

Then came Libby Dam. In 1974, for the first time since the Ice Age, the Kootenai River was tamed and the river no longer roiled with mountain snowmelt each spring. This surge of melt water would prompt the sturgeon to swim to their gravelly spawning beds and lay another load of eggs, Wagner said. That hasn’t happened in a generation.

The tribe has released nearly 100,000 young sturgeon into the river in the past 15 years. Hopefully, they will keep the species alive until the bigger questions about dams and habitat are figured out, said Sue Ireland, the tribe’s fisheries biologist. But the recovery effort goes well beyond releasing hatchery-raised fish.

The tribe is taking a “kitchen sink” approach, Ireland said. Efforts are under way to change dam operations to spark a spring spawn. The tribe is also trying to restore silt- and sand-smothered spawning gravels.

“We don’t know what all is wrong, but the window is closing on the wild population,” Ireland said.

One of the biggest challenges has been figuring out how to raise sturgeon in the hatchery, she said. The tribe has succeeded, though, and its hatchery now draws sturgeon advocates from as far away as Russia – sturgeon all over the world are in dire straits thanks to habitat loss and demand for caviar.

“They managed to survive two major extinctions on this planet,” Wagner said. “Now they’re in decline worldwide. If that doesn’t wake you up, what will?”