Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – The lake sturgeon population took another step toward future sustainability.
According to a Minnesota DNR news release, the state agency, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and members of the Red Lake and White Earth Nations just completed an egg take operation along the Rainy River on Minnesota’s northern boundary with Canada.
The egg harvest was previously conducted by the Rainy River First Nations in Ontario, Canada.
The eggs were then transported to two U.S. Fish and Wildlife hatcheries in Genoa, Wisconsin, and Valley City, North Dakota where they will be raised to fingerling size and then used to continue repopulating lakes and rivers along the Red River basin.
According to the Minnesota DNR, overharvesting, dam construction and loss of water quality decimated the lake sturgeon population beginning in the late-1800s.
By the mid-1900s, the Red River basin was almost completely devoid of lake sturgeon and the species would not have been able to sustain itself without an intervention.
Lake sturgeon restocking began in 1997, when some lake sturgeon were relocated from the Rainy River to Detroit Lake and the Otter Tail River, which began a 20-year stocking program for the scarce fish.
According to one area Minnesota DNR fisheries official, the agency has restocked about 500,000 lake sturgeon into the Red River basin and added their surveys show the large fish meeting the agency’s recovery goals.
The DNR also said they plan to transition management focus away from intensive stocking efforts to monitoring populations in the coming years.
During the next phase of restoration, priority will be placed on targeted stocking efforts on rivers within the basin, identifying spawning locations, evaluating the ability of populations to self-sustain and continuing efforts to remove barriers to fish passage
Lake sturgeon can live more than 150 years and the Minnesota state record for lake sturgeon is six-and-a-half feet long when it was caught and released.
Latest News
