Lawsuit Filed Over Pallid Sturgeon in Montana’s Yellowstone River

Today, February 2, an environmental group called the Defenders of Wildlife filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers and The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over a proposed dam on the Yellowstone River near Intake, Montana. Defenders of Wildlife spokesman Jonathan Proctor says the dam would put the Pallid Sturgeon at risk.

"This is an ancient fish, which has roots back 70 million years, it's really a living dinosaur," Proctor said. But it's been no match for the last several decades of human intervention with dams we've been building on these rivers. They've destroyed its habitat, and it is no longer able to reproduce."

Proctor says the federal government’s work on the Yellowstone river started out as a way to preserve the Palid Sturgeon, but that his organization was compelled to bring litigation after the project changed.

"Somehow along the way, in the last couple years, it has turned more into an irrigation project, with a plan to build an even larger dam across the Yellowstone River and a side channel they claim will allow the pallid sturgeon to go up and down stream, but which most fish biologists believe absolutely will not work, and will doom this fish to extinction," Proctor said.

Defenders of wildlife recommends a free flowing river for the Pallid Sturgeon and that other alternatives, such as water conservation and pumps should be used to help mitigate local irrigation issues.