ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. – An endangered fish that dates to the dinosaur days is making a recovery locally.

In West Alton, just below the Melvin Price Locks and Dam, volunteers confirmed Monday, April 21, the first spawning activity of 2025 for lake sturgeon.

This reintroduction fish tale is thanks to a cooperative effort between the Missouri Department of Conservation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“We’ve implanted transmitters like these inside some of the fish,” said Sarah Peper, fisheries biologist at the Missouri Department of Conservation. “They’re telemetry tags. They send out a signal and we can tell if they’re in the area then.”

They’ve been releasing lake sturgeons into fish and wildlife hatcheries for three decades, and it takes female sturgeon almost 30 years to reach maturity.

Sturgeons were spotted here in 2015 but didn’t return for years. But now, the endangered lake sturgeon is spawning just south of Alton thanks to some engineering.

 “Staying inside our water control policy and plan, we were able to manipulate gates eight and nine,” said Tyler Goble, Wildlife biologist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “By increasing the flow out of those and reducing the flow out of our other gates, we were able to stay within our boundaries but also increase the velocity along the bank, which is what sturgeon needs.”

Thursday afternoon, that beeping sound that’s registering tells the crew that there is a sturgeon in this part of the Mississippi River. Years of combined efforts are showing results.