I mentioned yesterday that the actual Detroit Free Press article about the new sturgeon reef in the Detroit River was not yet up on the freep site.  Well, it’s up today.  Excerpts and link:

The sturgeon arrived late but absolutely stole the show at an April 19 fete for a new chapter of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. For the first time, money has come together from both sides of the river — loonies and bucks in the same pot! — for a project, a sturgeon spawning reef to be laid in the river this fall.

The reception, speeches and champagne toast took place on Fighting Island, on the Canadian side of the river and owned by BASF Corp. U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, and his Canadian counterpart, Jeff Watson, a member of Parliament for much of Essex County, had the spotlight as the political parents of the wildlife refuge.

So much for the formalities. Politicians and press, funders and biologists all rushed out of the BASF lodge to see the sturgeon, brought dockside by two biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Sturgeon hark back to the time of the dinosaurs. Their recorded history suggests the Lake Huron-to-Lake Erie channel hosted the biggest numbers in the Great Lakes, and maybe in all of North America. They especially liked to loll in the Detroit River, which had nine known spawning sites.

Then our early Detroit predecessors nearly wiped them out, especially after discovering how well the oily fish burned in ship boilers.

But sturgeon can live a century or more, and at least a few of them never gave up completely on the Detroit River. Biologists started spotting them just off Zug Island during spawning season, and in 2001 finally collected eggs that proved sturgeon were once again reproducing.

Excitement about the Fighting Island spawning reef has spread like a contagion among the fishery crowd. Bruce Manny, a fishery biologist and sturgeon expert for the U.S. Geological Survey, brimmed with enthusiasm about what the next few years will reveal about sturgeon and the river. The Fighting Island channel reef has special potential, he said, because it lies upstream from some of the river’s last open spots of shoreline on the Canadian side — perfect nurseries for baby sturgeon.

Anticipation of sturgeon lovefests is spreading well beyond the biologists, too. The $178,000 in reef funding comes from foundations as well as government sources, with additional in-kind donations by BASF and DTE. The teamwork, essential to the refuge, shows how many borders can be crossed when people find a common motive.

http://tinyurl.com/6dweye

Note: The photo above comes from the State of Idaho’s web site.

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