Juvenile release

Despite buffetting winds that pressed off the broad expanse of the Columbia River below the Hugh Keenleyside Dam just upstream from Castlegar, BC, on April 22, a steady procession of youngsters gingerly wound their way to the water’s edge toting red pails brimming with precious cargo. By day’s end, a total of 4,000 juvenile white sturgeon–each of them barely 10 months old and eight inches snout to tail–had been released in the river as part of the Upper Columbia White Sturgeon Recovery Initiative. All told, during the course of the week’s events unfolding in different communties along the Columbia between Revelstoke and the Canada/US border, 12,000 of the fish raised at BC’s Kootenay Trout Hatchery were released in a program that not only returned the ancient fish to their historic range but also fostered a sense of ownership and responsibility in tomorrow’s generations.

Once abundant through most of the Columbia River’s 1,900 kilometre circuitous route to the sea, sturgeon numbers plunged to a low of only 4,200 fish (1,000 of these in the Canadian portion of the river) in the span of the last century, a decline that coincided with the proliferation of dams along the river. Worse yet, almost no juvenile sturgeon were to be found, prompting the creation of the Upper Columbia White Sturgeon Recovery Intiative made up of both Canadian and American stakeholders in 2000. Since then, the organization has released between 10,000 and 13,000 young sturgeon in the Canadian portion of the river while additional releases are carried out in the US. All of the fish have marked skutes or plates coded to the year of release and have implanted transponders to monitor their movements up and down the river.

“That must be neat to see,” I ventured to Crawley.

“You bet it is,” he shot back, a smile spreading across his face.