The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho invited the public to help out in releasing young sturgeon, raised at the Tribe’s hatchery facilities, into the waters of the Kootenai River, and hundreds of people took them up on the offer. All ages, kids and adults, showed up to see, hold, and release the legendary fish into the river, where the sturgeon once thrived. At times during the event, the line to release sturgeon stretched 50 feet or more back from the water’s edge.
The size of the sturgeon released ranged from around four inches up to around ten or twelve inches. As members of the festive Boundary County crowd carefully placed the sturgeon, one at a time, into the waters of the Kootenai at the boat ramp of the Boundary County Waterways building, the little fish would take a few moments in the shallow water near the boat ramp, seemingly gathering in their new surroundings, then gradually making their way off into deeper waters and out of view.
The release of the young sturgeon on Friday was actually the final stage of what has been the release of approximately 35,000 young sturgeon into the river over the past few weeks, including 25,000 from the Kootenai Tribe’s world class Twin Rivers Sturgeon and Burbot Hatchery, and another 10,000 from the hatchery facilities at the Reservation in the Kootenai Valley. The last 1,000 sturgeon to be released were held back for the public to take part, and those 1,000 were released by all who attended the event last Friday.
This brings the total sturgeon released over the
years into the Kootenai River to over 200,000
fish, according to Susan Ireland, Fish and
Wildlife Department Director for the Kootenai
Tribe of Idaho.These little fish, if they are fortunate enough to survive and thrive to adulthood, could live up to 100 years, and reach a size of 19 feet long, and weight of 1,000 pounds.
This is all part of the ambitious efforts of the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho to restore the Kootenai River to a habitat suitable not just for sturgeon to thrive, but also for the benefit of other fish and wildlife that populate the Kootenai Valley.
Good luck to the newly released juvenile Kootenai River White Sturgeon!
For more information on the extensive efforts of the Kootenai Tribe to restore the Kootenai River to a hospitable habitat for fish and wildlife, and to restore a healthy population of sturgeon and burbot fish to the Kootenai River, click here to see a previous detailed NewsBF story on their work).
And to read more about the Kootenai Tribe’s world class hatchery facilities, you can click here to read one article, and click here to read another.
