Summer diet of juvenile lake sturgeon reintroduced into the Genesee and St. Regis Rivers, New York USA

Abstract

Stocking is an adaptive management tool for resource management agencies to return native fish to historic waters where they have been extirpated (Bearlin et al., 2002;Cochran-Biederman et al., 2015).Assessment of changing physical and biotic habitat conditions is critical to fisheries and environmental management projects, including the reintroduction of native species (Cooke et al., 2012;Pegasov, 2009). In most cases when managers use reintroduction as a tool for conservation of long lived animals with long generation times, the calculated timeline for nonintervention population recovery is much greater than 100 years (Auer, 2004;Vélez-Espino & Koops, 2009). In any native fish reintroduction or conservation effort, understanding feeding ecology and the adequacy of the prey base is critical for success (Amacker & Alford, 2017;Civiello et al., 2018;Garvey & Chipps, 2012). Critical assessment of habitat use includes the evaluation of the use of that prey base (Amacker &