The fate of a fish as old as the dinosaurs is being decided in Montana, says The New York Times. The Missouri River used to team with pallid sturgeon, but today only 125 of the fish, which can grow up to six-feet and live as long as the average human, remain. Most environmentalists blame dams built to irrigate farmland for the species’ demise, since they block sturgeon eggs from moving downstream. “The eggs end up trapped in reservoirs like Lake Sakakawea, with a lot of sediment, a lot of bacteria and very little oxygen. There they suffocate and die,” says the Times.
In Montana, environmentalists and government officials are fighting over how to help the sturgeon move past one dam in particular, which is responsible for supplying water to 55,000 farm acres. The Bureau of Reclamation, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers have proposed to spend $60 million to rebuild the Intake Diversion Dam with a bypass channel for the sturgeon. The idea would mean lower maintenance costs for farmers. But environmentalists say that bypass channels rarely work. The Defenders of Wildlife have instead called for replacing the dam altogether with irrigation pumps, a project that would price in at $80 to $138 million. The federal agencies’ proposal is open for public comment until July 28th.
It’s not just dams that sturgeon have to be worried about. As writer Michelle Nijhuis revealed in her story with FERN, underground caviar hunters have made millions killing American sturgeon and related fish for their roe and passing it off as top-shelf caviar in Europe.