Displaying items by tag: tn aquarium sturgeon

 Students from Hixson High School help the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute release juvenile lake sturgeon into the Tennessee River from Coolidge Park on Oct. 23, in Chattanooga. This year the Aquarium and its partners in the Lake Sturgeon Working Group are celebrating 25 years of stocking sturgeon in the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Tennessee Aquarium

Long-term restoration efforts lead comeback of species, missing since 1970s

CHATTANOOGA — The Tennessee Aquarium’s longest-running conservation program is celebrating major developments that have biologists and wildlife managers brimming with excitement.

Massive, ancient and long-lived, the lake sturgeon has been extirpated (locally extinct) in Tennessee since the 1970s. The effort to re-establish this state-imperiled species began in 1998 with the formation of the Southeast Lake Sturgeon Working Group, a collaborative partnership between non-profits like the Aquarium as well as universities and state and federal agencies.

Since the start of reintroductions in 2000, working group members have raised and released more than 430,000 lake sturgeon into the Tennessee and Cumberland river watersheds.

The cumulative effect of that work is already changing the lake sturgeon’s fortunes. This year, the species’ conservation status in Tennessee decreased from endangered to threatened, an adjustment that reflects the long-term impact of the restoration program, says Dr. Anna George, the Aquarium’s vice president of conservation science and education.