Sturgeon Stays On Protected List

January 8, 2008

Release from: Katherine Bouma
Birmingham News (Alabama)

One of the longest-running and most bitter of Alabama's environmental battles ended Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider removing the Alabama sturgeon from the protection of the endangered species list.

Scientists say the Alabama sturgeon may be the rarest vertebrate animal in North America, with only one known to exist in the Alabama River after almost a decade of federal and state scientists trawling for the spiny creature.

Industry and environmentalists' lawyers have been battling over the sturgeon since the early 1990s.

Ray Vaughan, the Montgomery lawyer who successfully sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the fish in 2000, said time has shown that the sturgeon's protection has harmed no one.

"There are two dozen listed species in these same waterways, and I wish you'd show me one person who's lost a dollar off them," Vaughan said.

When the sturgeon was proposed for endangered species listing in 1993, river industries predicted that it would curtail dredging in the state's rivers, stopping barge traffic. They predicted damage to almost every industry that pours its wastewater into the rivers or uses barges, particularly pulp and paper mills.

But the lawyer who tried to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court this year, Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation, said he hung his case on the lack of economic effect the sturgeon made on the state.

The Endangered Species Act stakes its claim to protect plants and animals on such principles as protecting interstate commerce, Hopper said. But since the sturgeon is not for sale and seems to have no role in the economy, Hopper hoped he could mount a meaningful challenge to the 1973 law, he said.

"We were asking the court to consider the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act as it applied to this species," Hopper said.

The Supreme Court declined without comment to take the case Monday.

The Alabama sturgeon was placed on the Endangered Species List in 2000, when it was already so rare that scientists could not net a single female fish. That year, two male sturgeon lived in the state's fish hatchery in Marion. They died before the state's biologists could find mates for them.

Another Alabama sturgeon was not captured until April 2007, in spite of regular trawling for the fish by federal and state scientists working together. To avoid another death in captivity, that 3.7-pound male was released back into the Alabama River in Wilcox County the same month, after surgery to insert a sonar device in its abdomen.

Scientists have been tracking the fish since that time, hoping it will lead them to more of the species, said Steve Rider, the state's chief biologist on the case.

"We're hoping some of the areas he's spending the majority of his time in will lead us to others," Rider said.

The fish was a fully mature male, the second-largest ever captured, leading scientists to believe it is quite old.

The sturgeon was once plentiful throughout 1,000 miles of Southern rivers, old pictures and documents show.

Its population began to decline from over-fishing and began a steep drop-off after the dams of the 20th century prevented it from swimming far upstream. Studies have shown that some freshwater fish must swim hundreds of miles upriver before they will spawn.

As unlikely as it seems that the Alabama sturgeon will ever again thrive in the wild, Vaughan said he doesn't regret the fight for the animal.

"If you take it off the list, then you've guaranteed its chances are gone," he said. "We've made a decision. We've played God."