HARRAH, Wash. (AP) — Working on a shoestring budget, a Yakama biologist has built a hatchery to help recover sturgeon, a prehistoric fish that has taken a backseat to salmon.
The 36-year-old Donella Miller began has been rearing the migratory fish in a dozen above-ground swimming pools on a 15-acre Yakama Nation site. Next month, she plans the first release of few thousand sturgeon along the mid-Columbia River.
The fish has been a staple of the Yakama culture and diet, and tribal officials say it’s important to bring them back. Sturgeon are bottom-feeders so when dams went up along the Columbia River, they couldn’t access fish ladders. They became trapped and didn’t reproduce as they once did.
The tribal hatchery can raise about 40,000 sturgeon at one time.
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Information from: Yakima Herald-Republic, http://www.yakimaherald.com
