The Kootenai River White Sturgeon Acipenser transmontanus and Burbot Lota lota maculosa were once abundant in the Kootenai/ay River Basin in Idaho and Montana, USA, and British Columbia, Canada. Historically, the native fishes provided important cultural resources for indigenous peoples, and remain so today throughout the basin despite significant population decline. Kootenai White Sturgeon are listed as endangered in both countries due to cumulative effects of habitat destruction and of Libby Dam hydro-power operations in Montana that have resulted in persistent recruitment failure since the 1970’s. Due to similar causes, Burbot were functionally extirpated by the 1990’s. In 1988, the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho recognized the lack of White Sturgeon natural recruitment and started an experimental aquaculture facility to determine the feasibility of using wild broodstock to artificially spawn and rear year classes to reverse population decline. The Kootenai River Native Fish Conservation Aquaculture Program (KRNFCAP) began rearing fish during 1990-1992, and has been successfully releasing annual year classes since 1997. Following the Sturgeon program, a formal Burbot program feasibility evaluation was initiated in 2003. Since its inception, the conservation aquaculture program has boosted the Burbot abundance estimates from 50 adults in 2002 up to 50,000 adults. The KRNFCAP is part of multi-agency and stakeholder collaboration, and is one component of the greater Kootenai Ecosystem Restoration.
The KRNFCAP is guided by an annual adaptive management framework. As part of a large collaboration, the conservation hatcheries are used to 1) avoid extirpation and rebuild the species abundance to jump-start natural recruitment, and support culture and recreational harvest; 2) spawn, rear, and release early life stages across habitat types/conditions to determine causes of recruitment failure; and 3) spawn, rear, and release fish in a manner that supports post-release monitoring, research, and evaluations. The presentation will describe the applications of Parental Based Tagging that supports post-release monitoring and evaluation and guides adaptive management of habitat restoration projects.