Draft Baseline Report - Pallid Sturgeon Section

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Background The pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) was first recognized as a species by Forbes and Richardson (1905), based on nine specimens collected from the Mississippi River near Grafton, Illinois in 1904. The historical distribution of pallid sturgeon encompassed the Missouri River from Fort Benton -Great Falls, Montana downstream to the Mississippi River ( Kallemeyn 1983), the lower Platte River upstream to the confluence with the Elkhorn River (Lutey 2002), the Kansas River upstream to Lawrence, Kansas ( Kallemeyn 1983), the Yellowstone River, and other major tributaries to the Missouri River. The most upstream record of S. albus in the Mississippi River was near Keokuk, Iowa where an immature sturgeon was taken and identified by Coker (1930) as a pallid sturgeon. No other pallid sturgeon have been reported from the Mississippi River in Iowa, northern Illinois, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Therefore the principal range of pallid sturgeon in the Mississippi River is downstream of the Illinois River mouth ( Kallemeyn 1983). In 1963 a pallid sturgeon was caught in the St. Francis River, a tributary to the Mississippi River, near Madison, Arkansas (Buchanan 1973 in Kallemeyn 1983). The farthermost downstream pallid sturgeon on the Mississippi River was collected in the vicinity of New Orleans, Louisiana (Bailey and Cross 1954). Although the species' range is large, catch records are extremely rare and few sub - adults have been captured in recent years. Observations of pallid sturgeon over its entire range have declined from an average of 50 per year in the 1960's to 6 per year in the 1980's (Keenlyne 1989 in Peters et al. 2001). A historical range map is presented in Figure 1. (Historical range map) The pallid sturgeon was Federally listed as an endangered species on September 6, 1990 (55 FR 36641) pursuant to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 (16 USC 1531 et seq.) as amended. Six Recovery Priority Management Areas have been designated throughout the pallid sturgeon range. The confluence of the lower Platte River with the Missouri River was designated as Recovery Priority Management Area (RPMA) 4 for the species in the recovery plan (Lutey 2002). The designated Recovery Priority Management Area for pallid sturgeon is shown in Figure 2. (All RPMA areas or just RPMA area 4 ?) Range The current range of pallid sturgeon is described by Peters et al. (2001) as "the mainstem of the Mississippi River from its mouth to the confluence of the Missouri River, and the Missouri River upstream to Fort Benton, Montana as well as the lower portions of a limited number of tributaries. These tributaries include the lower 56 km of the Big Sunflower River (Keenlyne 1989) and the St. Francis River, the lower 64 km of the Kansas River (Cross 1967), the lower 34 km of the Platte River (Keenlyne 1989), and the lower 322 of the Yellowstone River." Draft Baseline Report — Pallid Sturgeon Section 3