Will captive-reared Southeast Regional Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "All of these fish have been surgically sterilized and outfitted with radio transmitters so that they can make us aware of suitable Gulf sturgeon habitat for future reintroductions or maybe even unknown wild sturgeon populations."
According to Robert Bakal of the Warm Springs Regional Fish Health Center, Gulf sturgeon were once abundant in the Appalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River System, but now this species, federally listed as threatened in 1991, has only one known population of 300 to 400 sturgeon located below the dam. Activities such as dams, dredging, and channel maintenance have helped deplete populations of this species. Nationally, the Gulf sturgeon is found in the Gulf of Mexico and its drainages, primarily in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
Service biologists are conducting this pilot study in cooperation with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in the hopes that if it is successful, similar studies can be conducted in other reservoirs. This type of study has never been attempted with Gulf sturgeon. A similar project is now under way with another federally-listed species, the endangered shortnose sturgeon in the Savannah River.
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