White Sturgeon: Working Together to Recover this Endangered Species

The population of White Sturgeon in the Canadian portion of the Upper Columbia River is undergoing recruitment failure, where young fish are not surviving to an age where they mature and contribute to the next generation. As a result, the population was listed as endangered under the Species At Risk Act (SARA) in 2006. A conservation aquaculture program, supported by the FWCP, was initiated in 2000 to address recovery while research into recruitment failure occurred. A total of 136,914 hatchery‐reared juvenile White Sturgeon have been released into the Canadian portion of the Columbia River from 2002 to 2014, and approximately 4,000 will be released in 2015.