Partners aligned throughout the lower Missouri River to revise and enhance the Pallid Sturgeon Recovery Plan written back in 1991. The team included managers, biologists and researchers from State and Federal agencies intimately involved with pallid recovery.

The team set out to propose a new draft of the recovery plan that will incorporate a life history model put forth by USGS in a recent science strategy meeting hosted by the Corps of Engineers.

The meeting was planned and coordinated by CMFRO’s Wyatt Doyle as project coordinator for Missouri River studies out of Columbia.

This type of plan is needed to create a priority list for managers implementing the program through the Biological Opinion.

It is also needed to give administrators, researchers and monitoring teams a method of communication for a fair process in funding proposals that will be linked to recovery plan priorities.

The team was able work collaboratively to identify the steps needed to revise the plan now two decades old and begin to put the best science forward in our efforts to recover the endangered pallid sturgeon.