Can the U.S. save this dinosaur fish?
After 70 million years on earth, the fate of the pallid sturgeon depends on what officials decide to do about a a single dam, says High Country News. A prehistoric-looking fish with ghostly white skin, the species is down to fewer than 125 wild-born adults in Montana’s upper Missouri River Basin.
An ancient ‘dinosaur fish’ faces its last swim in Montana
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 6-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.
As sturgeon wane, caviar poaching in the Ozarks
The American paddlefish, a relative of the sturgeon that looks like a prehistoric marine reptile, is the prey in the insatiable international market for caviar, writes Michelle Nijhuis. She describes a poaching frenzy on the Osage River in central Missouri, where hundreds of pounds of roe were sold to racketeers who labeled it as Russian caviar worth $300 an ounce. The paddlefish is the latest species to be decimated to satisfy the carving for caviar.