I apologize, the sturgeon are not North Dakota's alone, they belong to the world community. A veritable circle of life.

Unless of course, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte is successful in killing them all!

Sorry. That was overly dramatic. But if I was a sturgeon, the governor would be going straight to voicemail.

Greg used to love them, and then water got short. Tempers flared, and the ancient and endangered pallid sturgeon may get the wrong end of the irrigation shaft. These sturgeons would like nothing more than to swim upstream to Montana and get frisky and raise a family under "under that big Montana sky".

That would mean an increase in water flow in the spring from Montana's very own Fort Peck Dam to stimulate the boys traveling upstream and then a cut cut back in the water flow later to keep the kids from getting drawn back into the big lake.  The big lake where AP News reports

 Sturgeon larvae would have a better chance to grow into free-swimming fish and avoid drifting down to Lake Sakakawea, where they currently settle to the bottom and die.

 

Being ancient is always a challenge, or every species would be doing it.

Back to the AP story..

Gianforte said the Army Corps lacks authority to conduct the test flows from Fort Peck Dam because it has no legal right to the Missouri River’s water. He also faulted federal officials for not detailing how they would make up for any damages from the altered releases when they published an environmental study of the project in March.

Are they moving into the territory of other endangered Missouri River species such as the Piping Plover or the Interior Least Tern? Seems like a shame as the birds can fly somewheres else, but the sturgeon is kinda stuck in the water..

Pallid sturgeon live in the Missouri and Mississippi River basins and can grow up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. They’ve been around for tens of millions of years, but saw dramatic population declines after Fort Peck and other dams were built along the Missouri.

There's a possible solution in the works to build a channel so the sturgeons could avoid the dam. Seems nobody is too optimistic about that.

Environmental groups concerned the channel wouldn’t work fought the project for years in federal court but lost.

It's another lose-lose situation, whereas the immediate needs of the people may trump the long term survival of another species.

Stay safe sturgeon and keep getting frisky!


 

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