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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Eurasian sturgeon proposed for the endangered species list

Four species of fish that swim the rivers and seas that straddle the space between Europe and Asia will be added to the endangered list if a proposal circulated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife is finalized.

(CN) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list four different endangered species of sturgeon native to Europe and Asia in a document slated to be published to the federal register on Wednesday. 

The Russian sturgeon, the ship sturgeon, the Persian sturgeon and the stellate sturgeon are proposed to be added to the endangered species list, with all four species being native to the Black and Caspian Sea region. 

The four subspecies referred to together as the Ponto-Caspian sturgeon, prowl the rivers of the Black, Caspian, Azov and Aral sea basins, where they are hunted not so much for their meat as for caviar.

The federal agency routinely lists species endemic to other countries to restrict commercial use of products related to the harvest of that animal. In this case, it will allow fish and wildlife officials to restrict the import of caviar derived from the four subspecies of sturgeon. 

The listing also helps raise awareness about the plight of animals in other countries. 

While caviar harvesting is a factor in the decline of the species, dams on the Danube River and the Volga River, Europe’s two largest rivers that feed the Black and Caspian Sea, encroach upon the fish’s habitat. 

“Nearly 100 dams at least 8 m (26 ft) tall are present in the Caspian and Aral Sea Basins, and approximately 300 such dams dot the Black and Azov Sea basins,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said. “These dams are effectively impassable for sturgeon, eliminating the fishes’ ability to migrate to and from spawning grounds upstream of such barriers.”

There is one dam on the Volga River called the Volgograd Dam, which eliminated approximately 60 to 80% of the sturgeon breeding grounds in the area when it was constructed between 1958 and 1961. 

The species is now highly reliant on adequate flows released from the reservoir above the dam, which are not always consistent, according to the agency. 

But overfishing for sturgeon meat and caviar harvesting also impedes the species' ability to sustain healthy population levels. 

“The black-market trade continues to negatively affect the species in the wild, despite existing Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) regulations and national and regional conservation agreements,” the agency said. 

Sturgeon have difficulty in bouncing back from population lows, partly because they take so long to reach sexual maturity. Sturgeons are characterized by their long narrow body and a flat underside with a mouth that faces downward. Their bodies can have armored plates and they have small eyes and a skeleton made of cartilage. 

They prefer to patrol the bottom of rivers and lakes, and they spend most of their adult lives in the large seas before retreating to the rivers of their birth to spawn. 

The range contemplated by the listing encompasses 20 countries in both Europe and Asia, including Russia, which straddles both continents. These countries have a variety of regulatory approaches to the declining population, according to the agency.

“Sturgeon fishing on Romania’s portion of the lower Danube was tightly controlled beginning with Communist rule in 1947, but even so, the catch declined precipitously during the second half of the 20th century,” the agency said, pointing to the difficulty of navigating the regulatory patchwork.

Finally, the sturgeon are threatened by invasive species that compete for their resources. Specifically, a jellyfish called the worts comb jelly outcompetes smaller fish like anchovies and mackerel, which are the favored prey of sturgeon. 

“In a single day, warty comb jelly individuals may ingest over 10 times their own body mass," the agency said. 

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Categories / Environment, Government

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