Endangered lake sturgeon show signs of successful comeback in Missouri

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) -- Decades of recovery efforts are bringing one of the Missouri's endangered and longest-living fish back to prominence according to new findings this spring.

Capable of growing up to 8 feet long and weighing 300 pounds, lake sturgeon once thrived in the Missouri River before being driven to the brink of extinction by overfishing and habitat loss in the late 1800s, to the point where the fish was deemed incapable of recovery by the mid-1900s.

In a significant development, the Missouri Department of Conservation confirmed last week that lake sturgeon spawning, or the release of eggs, was witnessed in the wild for the fourth consecutive year in West Alton, located in southeastern Missouri around St. Louis, a major development for recovery programs that first began in 1984.

"It's very exciting because these long held stocking efforts that we've done, since the 80s, is with the hope that we would kind of stabilize the populations and continue to work to what they need to have self-sustaining populations on their own," MDC Northwest Staff Scientist Kasey Whiteman said. “Any time that we can find natural reproduction going with a species that has been struggling for a long time, that's a success.”

The fast-moving bottom feeder is one of the largest fish in North America and can reach up to 150 years old. As a result, it takes 20 to 30 years before slow-growing lake sturgeon are capable of spawning for the first time.

Widespread coordination and conservation efforts between MDC and the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and volunteer citizens have been instrumental in developing an effective habitat restoration plan for the fish that dates back more than 150 million years.

Conservation measures include protection from fishing, habitat restoration, river management and research, among many other efforts. The most widespread recovery program was the stocking of captive lake sturgeon, which was done by transferring eggs from Wisconsin down to Missouri hatcheries. Stocking programs have largely occurred in central Missouri down to St. Louis.

"They've been working with the Corps to actually mimic those (conditions) ... being modified in a way that we've seen consecutive years of spawning gives us hope that we're looking in on something important here that maybe is possible to mimic in other locations as well so that they can actually spawn in other places,” he said. 

The fish, which historically occurred in the Mississippi, Missouri, and lower Osage rivers, was classified as endangered in Missouri in 1974. 

Whiteman said continued efforts to improve lake sturgeon habitat on Missouri rivers will be the most effective way to ensure successful spawning and population growth long term. Captive breeding is only effective if the environment they’re being released into is conducive for repopulation. 

“Based on the current conditions of the river we don't see them make it much past 20 or 25 years old,” Whiteman said. "They need all the different components of those big rivers to be successful. And so the uniqueness and challenge with these species of fish is that there's so much work that has to be done with partners so that we can all make the habitat better.”

Statistics compiled by the U.S. Fish Commission in 1899 show that 50,000 pounds of lake sturgeon were harvested commercially from the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in 1895.

Although most MDC research in St. Joseph is geared toward conservation of other sturgeon species, Whiteman said the lake sturgeon’s ability to travel long distances allows for supplemental research efforts to take place locally.  

“We do see them occasionally … we can go out when we're trying to track our pallid sturgeon or other fish and when we come across the lake sturgeon, we can collect the information on that and share that information with our counterparts that are more in depth in some of the deeper studies. So there's a lot of overlap in our research of what we do.”

A stable population of lake sturgeon in Missouri would also provide a unique and enticing recreational sport fishing opportunity for anglers, similar to what Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota offer. 

“Getting them to spawn is just half the battle, you know, getting the fish to hatch out and actually recruit to the system is the next part of the equation,” Whiteman said. “A realistic range would be all the open parts of the river system on the Mississippi and Missouri to the extent where the fish can still make passage and move."