Ohio Is Giving Lake Sturgeon a Second River

Here's a good one: Ohio is about to put lake sturgeon — a fish that can outlive every person reading this — back into a second river. The Ohio Division of Wildlife will release young lake sturgeon into the Scioto River this fall as part of an ongoing plan to reintroduce the historic fish into the state's major waterways, as reported by Outdoor News in early September.

What happened

For years, sturgeon restoration in Ohio has centered on one river up north. The ODNR Division of Wildlife, along with the Toledo Zoo, has been stocking lake sturgeon into the Maumee River, a Lake Erie tributary, for many years, and that program is expected to continue. Now the effort is spreading. The division is turning its attention to the state's other rivers for stockings of these ancient fish — starting with the Scioto, the river that runs right through the middle of the state and past downtown Columbus.

Meet the fish worth waiting a century for

Lake sturgeon are not a subtle animal. They can reach six to eight feet in length and upwards of 200 pounds over a 100-year lifespan, making them the largest fish in the Great Lakes. They are also famously patient: they don't reproduce until age 20, according to the Division of Wildlife, and female sturgeon can need up to 25 years to reach maturity and only reproduce every few years, meaning recovery is a long-term project.

That slow clock is part of why they disappeared in the first place. Sturgeon were once abundant in Lake Erie and the Ohio River, but the population declined over the last 150 years because of dams blocking access to spawning sites and unregulated harvesting. Ohio eventually lost all known spawning populations entirely. Putting them back is a decision made for people who haven't been born yet. There's something quietly great about that.

Why the Maumee gives Ohio confidence

The Scioto stocking isn't a shot in the dark — there's a track record. In 2018, a 20-year reintroduction program began on the Maumee River with the aim of establishing a self-sustaining population. Researchers have been watching those fish closely, and early signs are promising, according to research led by The University of Toledo published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management. As one researcher put it, "They're surviving at a rate that if we keep stocking them for 20 years, we'd hopefully reach our target population of 1,500 naturally reproducing adults." Take a program that's working on one river and bring it to another — that's about as sensible as conservation news gets.

Go stand by a river

You don't have to be a biologist to enjoy this one. The Scioto is easy to reach — it threads through Columbus and a long stretch of central Ohio — and it's worth remembering, next time you're walking a riverside trail, that somewhere under that brown water there may soon be a fish built to outlast us all. If you want to see sturgeon up close in the meantime, the Toledo Zoo has been a longtime partner in raising them for the Maumee program.

This is the kind of story we had in mind when we put together our Ohio collection — a state that keeps quietly fixing things it once broke. And if you find yourself yelling the first half of a certain two-letter cheer at a passing stranger on the Scioto Mile, the O-H Tee will do the talking for you.

Common questions

When will sturgeon be released into the Scioto River?

The Ohio Division of Wildlife plans to release young lake sturgeon into the Scioto River this fall, per Outdoor News reporting in early September.

How long until sturgeon are truly back?

Decades, honestly. Lake sturgeon don't reproduce until age 20, so the fish released this fall won't have their own young until many of us have gray hair. The Maumee program was designed from the start as a 20-year effort aiming at a self-sustaining population.

Is the Maumee River program ending now?

No. The Maumee stocking program, run with the Toledo Zoo, is expected to continue — the Scioto release is an expansion, not a replacement.

Reported by Outdoor News. Details as published at the time of writing.