So today, dry winter and low mountain snowpacks are driving the Corps to release storage in the Missouri River mainstem dams hoping to prop up the navigation season at the risk of providing less water for hydroelectric generation. Pallid sturgeon are living dinosaurs but when the Missouri River dams were built it sealed the fate of the ancient species. Scientists and the US Army Corps of Engineers have learned that unless newly hatched pallid sturgeon have several hundred miles of unimpeded waters they cannot survive.
“Even with the lower than average runoff forecast the hydrologic conditions are sufficient to conduct a flow test from Fort Peck Dam,” said John Remus, chief of the Corps’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, in a news release. The goal is to boost flows from Fort Peck by 1,700 cfs each day until the peak flow at the Wolf Point gauge reaches 16,000 cfs. [Fort Peck Reservoir water releases planned for pallid sturgeon research]During heavy Spring runoff Fort Peck Dam partially failed in 1938 then was tested by flood waters again in 2011 when this interested party was living in Montana.
Under President Joe Biden and pressure from the US Fish and Wildlife Service the Corps boosted releases from the Fort Peck Dam in 2021 for spawning pallid sturgeon after it was suspended during the horrors of the previous administration.
Pallid sturgeon larva need eight to 14 days of drift time after hatching to mature, instead they are dying before then in the oxygen starved environments found at the head of reservoirs like Sakakawea and Fort Peck. https://t.co/WHXQJQphCd
— Tom Lutey (@TomLutey) September 30, 2021
Geomorphic classification framework for assessing reproductive ecology of Scaphirhynchus albus (pallid sturgeon), Fort Peck segment, Upper Missouri River, Montana and North Dakota, https://t.co/0bEHlhuBia pic.twitter.com/2EuAOo197P
— USGS Pubs Warehouse (@USGS_Pubs) October 11, 2023
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