Image: Michigan State University.
By David Poulson
The Great Lakes’ favorite charismatic mega-fauna got star treatment from the Associated Press recently in a story about the recovery nationwide of a fish that once swam with dinosaurs.
The story compares the decline of sturgeon to the massacre of buffalo. But it highlights successful restorations across the country, noting that the largest group of the fish is in the river corridor linking Lakes Huron and Erie.
It attributes the beginnings of a recovery to fishing limits, stocking programs and cleaner water.
But recovery is slowed by dams, the story reports. “One solution has been a fish elevator and tanks that haul them around two hydroelectric dams on the Menominee River, which flows between Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”