Rehabilitation of Lake Sturgeon in the Great Lakes: Making Progress

In the Great Lakes, most populations of Lake Sturgeon have been extirpated or reduced to very low numbers by over-harvest and loss of habitat. In the central Great Lakes (southern Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, and Lake St. Clair) a substantial sturgeon population (16,000) has persisted. This population is listed as Threatened in Michigan and Ontario. Outside the Great Lakes, but still in the Great Lakes basin, another large population of Lake Sturgeon (51,000 adults) exists in Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin. There, over the past century, Lake Sturgeon have been carefully managed by limiting harvest, constructing riverine spawning grounds, guarding spawning adults and encouraging public education and support for sturgeon rehabilitation through organizations like Sturgeon for Tomorrow. If these Wisconsin management practices were applied to the existing sturgeon population in the central Great Lakes, we hypothesize that a larger, self-sustaining population of Lake Sturgeon would result. Elsewhere in the Great Lakes, the same management practices could be used to rehabilitate smaller remnant and extirpated Lake Sturgeon populations. The Laurentian Great Lakes have the potential to be home to abundant and self sustaining Lake Sturgeon populations at a time when global sturgeon populations are in dire straits.