High Missouri Dam Releases Could Hurt Fisheries

Originally published in the Dickinson Press on May 6, 2011
Click here for original link
by Associated Press

Fishery managers in North Dakota and South Dakota are nervous about anticipated high water releases from upstream dams on the Missouri River this summer.

The Army Corps of Engineers has said this could be a year of record runoff into the river system that stretches from the mountains in Montana to Missouri, where it empties into the Mississippi River. The Fort Peck, Lake Sakakawea and Lake Oahe upper basin reservoirs are all but full, and dam releases this summer are expected to be higher than they have been in 14 years, The Bismarck Tribune reported.

Fisheries officials in the Dakotas are worried about the effect on rainbow smelt, a main food for game fish such as walleye, when summer releases hit the projected range of 49,000-54,000 cubic feet per second.

Scientists write about their pallid sturgeon work

Blogmaster's Note: There's a lot of work being done this spring on the river to collect endangered pallid sturgeon for breeding and restocking and tracking gravid pallid sturgeon as they move upriver to spawn. The Missouri Dept. of Conservation, US Fish & Wildlife Service, South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks, Nebraska Game & Parks, US Geological Survey and US Army Corps of Engineers are all involved and partnering together on the projects. 

Click here for the excellent blog by the US Geological Survey River Studies Branch on their Comprehensive Sturgeon Research Project:http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/csrp/

Below is a reprint of an article published by Bill Graham of the Missouri Dept. of Conservation.


Primitive fish a precious catch to save the species
 By Bill Graham, MDC.
A pallid sturgeon born in the muddy flows of the Missouri or Mississippi rivers and surviving more than a decade to reach reproductive maturity is among the rarest fishes in North America, an endangered species facing extinction.

Which is why a researcher  who nonchalantly handles dozens of big fish daily got excited when he saw the flat snout and staggered barbels on a pale, three-foot-long fish thrashing in the Missouri River.

“Ooh, big pallid,” shouted Thomas Huffmon, a resource science assistant for the Missouri Department of Conservation seeking hatchery brood fish to save a species.

Right: Missouri River Relief's Vicki Richmond and Missouri Master Naturalist Mark Chambers show off a hatchery pallid sturgeon they helped catch with Thomas Huffmon's MDC crew this spring. 

Boat operator Darby Niswonger quickly shifted the motor to idle and prepared to help land the prehistoric fish.

The Perils of the Pelican

Originally published in Great Falls Tribune May 27, 2010
by Michael Babcock
Original link: http://bit.ly/htxKOx

(blogmasters note: this article was published in 2010, but it's a good example of the perils that migratory birds face across their range)

Pity the pelican: misunderstood and wrongly accused of taking a bite out of trout numbers in Montana and here on the Missouri River.

Each spring the carcasses begin showing up in the river after the vandals start shooting.

Folks who live on the river between Cascade and Holter Lake call to let us know that the mayhem has begun. One here, another there, three or four there. All summer long the calls will continue.