According to CNET reports, local wildlife experts in the United States are celebrating the first verified Lake sturgeon spawning event in the Red River Basin in more than 100 years** The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) posted a series of tweets on twitter on Friday to commemorate this "feel good conservation story".
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"Between 1880 and 1930, Lake sturgeons were driven to extinction in the Red River Basin of Minnesota and many other watersheds," USFWS said. "Sturgeon is a migratory fish with a long life span and extremely slow breeding cycle, making them extremely vulnerable to overfishing and habitat fragmentation."
The female sturgeon lays hundreds of thousands of eggs in the water, and the male sturgeon fertilizes it. The Minnesota Department of natural resources this week shared a video of sturgeon spawning.
Some organizations, including the Minnesota Department of natural resources, aboriginal groups and the Federal Bureau of investigation, jointly implemented the sturgeon reintroduction program in 1997. Female Lake sturgeons take 20 to 25 years to mature, and then they breed every 4 to 6 years.
It's not just about releasing fish into waterways. Workers also demolished the old dam and cleared the passage so that fish could move through the connecting habitat of rivers and lakes.
In a Facebook post this week, the Minnesota National Forest Service asked wildlife viewers to respect the fish. "It is illegal to target or interfere with the spawning of Lake sturgeons," the agency said DNR requires that any observed oviposition behavior be reported.