A question arose last week on White Sturgeon in the Kootenai River in
northern Idaho. The messages were eventually forwarded to Jeff Laufle, a
fisheries biologist with the Army Corps of Engineers. He sent the
following posting which I am forwarding to the list with his permission.

dale goble

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 95 11:32:20 PST
From: jeff.laufle at internet.nps.usace.army.mil
Subject: sturgeon

You both recently posted messages on the Tweeters board concerning
Kootenai River white sturgeon. I don't subscribe to that board, but
those messages were passed to me, and I thought I'd respond and update
you.

The Kootenai R. white sturgeon was listed as endangered in September
1994. There is a Kootenai River White Sturgeon Recovery Team, headed
by the US Fish and Wildlife Service out of Boise. It definitely needs
info on effects of water levels on the Creston Wildlife Area marshes.
You can contact Steve Duke at steve_duke at fws.gov or call him at
208-334-1931.

The factor we have been focusing on is indeed spring spawning flows,
and we have been providing experimental flows using stored water for
the last few years. However, there are potentially other
factors--nutrients, habitat loss, contaminants--which the recovery
team is also addressing. The basic problem is not necessarily lack of
spawning, but in fact lack of recruitment. We know that sturgeon will
spawn in many flow circumstances, but what we don't have a good handle
on is why they spawn where they do (in the flatter part of the valley,
over sand and silt, vs in the Kootenai Canyon, over rock and gravel).
While we are providing flows to get them to spawn, no one has
concluded that spring flows are for certain linked to recruitment (or
that they are not)--in other words, we don't know whether the eggs are
hatching, or if so, whether the larvae are surviving, and so on.
There have been year class problems since before Libby Dam was built.

It is not true that there are no sturgeon younger than 20 years, but
there aren't many, as far as we know, and some of them are releases
from an experimental hatchery program.

The Recovery Team meets this Friday in Spokane, so contact Steve
before then. Canadian reps include Gordon Ennis of the Dept. of
Fisheries and Oceans (604-666-2057), Ray Lauzier--also of DFO
(604-666-7471), and Jay Hammond of the BC Ministry of Environment,
Lands and Parks (604-354-6343).

Don't know whether either of you is planning to attend the Upper
Columbia Water Resources Workshop in Coeur d'Alene this week, but I am
scheduled to be one of 3 speakers discussing various aspects of this
issue on Thur (that is, unless the US government budget process gets
in the way of my being there).

Jeff Laufle
(Fisheries Biologist)
US Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle
jeffrey.c.laufle at nps.usace.army.mil