Their efforts have met with resounding success, with the population increasing from less than 40,000 to more than 50,000 fish. According to Zeb Hogan, leader of National Geographic's Megafishes Project, this is a rare success story: “Worldwide, most species of large freshwater fish are in danger of going in the near future. The white sturgeon seems to have avoided the fate of species like the Chinese paddlefish of the Yangtze river and the critically-endangered giant catfish of the Mekong river."
Hogan said that the collaborative conservation programme that succeeded in protecting the Fraser river sturgeon would be difficult to duplicate where more countries and higher populations are involved. Dating back 200 million years, sturgeon have undergone very few morphological changes in that time, and are considered “living fossils."
Native tribes, known as the ‘First Nations', consider the sturgeon to be an almost god-like creature, and were the first to insist that the fish be protected. Though legally entitled to harvest sturgeon, the First Nations' tribes adhere to a voluntary moratorium.
December 2008
