Few species can evoke such feelings of awe and respect as the prehistoric green sturgeon. Its sheer size and impressive body structure alone is enough to captivate one's attention, weighing up to 350 pounds and growing up to 7 feet in length. However, upon learning the long history of this magnificent fish, imagination takes over as you are transformed to a time long before humans walked upon this earth.

Photo: Oregon Department of fish & game

The green sturgeon has roamed the Pacific Ocean since the age of the dinosaurs, venturing up select rivers of the West Coast to spawn during the spring. Its unique appearance has remained unchanged for over 200 million years, with a skeleton made mostly of cartilage and bony plates in place of scales for protection. The body of a green sturgeon is olive green in color, and it uses a vacuum cleaner-like mouth to siphon shrimp, mollusks and small fish from the depths of the rivers and estuaries. This fish can live up to 70 years, spawning every three to five years in deep, cool pools within large, turbulent rivers.

Given this impressive history of the green sturgeon, it is distressing to learn that the species has declined by 88% throughout most of its range. Although its range encompasses marine waters from Mexico to Alaska, it only spawns in the largest rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, all of these rivers have undergone tremendous impacts from dams, diversions, and sedimentation. Known spawning populations are limited to three river systems today: the Sacramento, Klamath-Trinity and Rogue. The remaining spawning populations in these three rivers are estimated to contain only a few hundred mature females.

In June 2001, EPIC submitted a formal scientific research petition to list the green sturgeon as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) agreed that a status review was warranted, but this agency failed to make a final determination on our petition within the required one-year review period. EPIC and a coalition of environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit in November 2002 to force NMFS to make a final determination, charging unreasonable delay in responding to our petition.

Unfortunately, EPIC's long battle to gain protection for the green sturgeon continues. Last January, NMFS issued a negative determination on our petition, refusing to protect this imperiled species. This determination notes that the species faces challenges from over-fishing and habitat destruction resulting from low water levels, high water temperatures, sedimentation, and toxic pollution. Yet in the face of these risk factors, it cites "considerable uncertainty regarding their significance or effects," and concludes that the green sturgeon "neither appears to be declining in population numbers or is in danger of extinction."

As the last step in our years of work to gain protection for this species, EPIC filed a legal challenge to overturn this determination on April 7, 2003, charging that it was arbitrary and contrary to the best available science. This legal action seeks protection for both "distinct population segments" of the green sturgeon described in the January determination, which are defined by a boundary at the Eel River in California.

Glimmer of Hope for Sturgeon in the Eel River
It has been presumed that spawning populations of green sturgeons in California are lost in the Eel, South Fork Trinity, and San Joaquin Rivers. Fortunately, new information shows this may not be the case in the Eel River, where a baby green sturgeon was sighted far upstream--between Alderpoint and Eel Rock--last summer. Large, adult green sturgeon have been seen in the Eel for most of the last several years, but this is the first recent sighting of a baby green sturgeon as far as EPIC knows. This gives great hope that this primeval creature can be restored to the Eel River and will continue to roam these waters as it has for eons.