Contact: Rob Ostrander 202.224.7627 Shana Stribling 202.224.0309
Friday, June 10, 2005

WASHINTON, DC – U.S. Senator Kit Bond today announced that he secured $500,000 in federal funds for a biological study on the life history requirements and habitat preference of the Pallid Sturgeon. Bond stressed that this research is critical to ensuring a balanced approach is taken to Missouri River management.

“The most challenging approach in river management is to balance the needs of fish, wildlife, and people,” said Bond. “This study will help us as we move forward to address the multiple needs of a complex system and provide adequate wildlife habitat.”

Bond secured $500,000 for a study on the Pallid Sturgeon to be conducted by the Columbia Environmental Research Center of the United States Geological Survey in Columbia, Missouri. Bond emphasized that, although the Pallid Sturgeon is a federally-listed endangered species in the Missouri River, very little is known about its life cycle and environmental requirements for survival.

Without biological research on the Sturgeon, information on how various river management alternatives might impact Pallid Sturgeon populations is only speculation. In order to ensure that any management plan for the Missouri River adequately protects the habitat of the Pallid Sturgeon, empirical scientific research must be undertaken, which Bond’s funds provide for.

The $500,000 in federal dollars will provide for tracking tagged Pallid Sturgeon to examine their movement and continuous habitat use, and to characterize the reproductive status of captured Sturgeon over time. The study will also characterize habitat used by the Sturgeon and provide detailed visualizations of depth, substrate, and velocity at areas of significant use. In addition, funding would provide for correlation of habitat use and movement information with changes in flow and temperature, and comparison of habitat date in selected reaches of the Lower Missouri River.

Since he served as Missouri’s Governor Bond has fought to ensure Missouri’s river needs are met. In 2005 Bond defeated legislative attempts to hold an additional 9 million acre feet of water behind the upstream dams. As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, Bond inserted language in the VA/HUD spending bill to prohibit the harmful Missouri River provision from being implemented.

As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Bond secured more than $4 million for critical Missouri environmental projects in the fiscal year 2006 Interior Appropriations bill. The spending bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee this afternoon. Before being signed into law the bill must be passed by the full U.S. Senate and reconciled with the House of Representatives' bill.