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Because the pallid sturgeon was not recognized as a distinct species until 1905, it was not listed in early <br />commercial fishery reports, so little is recorded about its abundance prior to that time. Even as late as <br />the mid- 1900s, it was common for pallid sturgeon to be tallied in commercial catch records as either <br />shovelnose or lake sturgeon (Keenlyne 1995). Correspondence and notes of researchers suggest, that <br />the pallid sturgeon was still fairly common in many parts of the Mississippi and Missouri River systems <br />as late as 1967 (Keenlyne 1989). The literature indicates that declines in populations have occurred <br />coincidental with development of the Missouri and Mississippi River systems for flood control and <br />navigation (Deacon et al. 1979, Keenlyne 1989). [Excerpt from Duffy et al. 1996]. Forbes and <br />Richardson (1905) and Bailey and Cross (1954) indicated that the species was never as common as <br />the shovelnose sturgeon. <br />A comparison of pallid sturgeon and shovelnose sturgeon catch records provides an indication of the <br />rarity of pallid sturgeon. At the time of their original description, pallid sturgeon composed 1 in 500 <br />river sturgeon captured in the Mississippi River at Grafton, Illinois (Forbes and Richardson 1905). <br />Pallid sturgeon were more abundant in the lower Missouri River near West Alton, MO, representing <br />one -fifth of the river sturgeon captured (Forbes and Richardson 1905). Carlson et al. (1985) captured <br />4,355 river sturgeon in 12 sampling stations on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Field identification <br />revealed 11 (0.25 percent) pallid sturgeon. Grady et al. (in prep) collected 4,435 river sturgeon in the <br />lower 850 mi (1,367 km) of the Missouri River and 100 mi (161 km) of the Middle Mississippi River <br />from November 1997 to April 2000. Field identification revealed nine wild (0.20 percent) and nine <br />hatchery-origin pallid sturgeon. Ongoing field work at the Missouri Department of Transportation <br />Hermann Bridge Replacement site has resulted in two pallid sturgeon (0.17 percent) of 1,192 river <br />sturgeons collected January through September 2000 (J. Grady, pers. comm. 2000). <br />During systematic sampling on the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in 1995, the Montana Department <br />of Game, Fish and Parks collected 10 (2.2 percent) pallid sturgeon compared to 444 shovelnose <br />sturgeon (Liebelt 1995). Reed and Ewing (1993) collected 11 (11 percent) pallid sturgeon, 18 hybrids <br />and 74 shovelnose sturgeon in the vicinity of the Old River Control Complex in Louisiana. Watson and <br />Stewart (199 1) noted one (0.29 percent) pallid sturgeon out of 350 sturgeon from the lower <br />Yellowstone River in Montana. <br />Bailey and Cross (1954) provided information on the proportion of pallid sturgeon in the total <br />commercial catch of river sturgeon from various parts of the species' range as follows: Kansas River at <br />Lawrence, KS (8 percent) (number of species not reported); Missouri River in South Dakota, 3 of 62 <br />specimens (5 percent); and Mississippi River at New Orleans, 3 of 4 specimens (75 percent). Fisher <br />(1962) recorded 4 of 13 river sturgeons (31 percent) from the Missouri River in Missouri as pallid <br />sturgeon. Comparable commercial catch records are not available for the upper river reaches where <br />commercial fishing was light or nonexistent. <br />The channelized Missouri River downstream from Sioux City, IA, to the mouth and the Mississippi <br />River downstream from the mouth of the Missouri River are rapidly flowing river sections. Thus, <br />104 Status Range Wide -PS <br />