Vanderhoof, B.C.- It has been a project more than ten years in the making, a conservation centre for the endangered Nechako white sturgeon. 

At a  special announcement today at Riverside Park in Vanderhoof it was revealed there is now funding for the construction and operations of a conservation centre. Funding has been made available from the Province ($3.5 million), Rio Tinto Alcan ($1.5 million), the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC and the District of Vanderhoof ($310,000).  

The facility is expected to cost $5.5 million to build and afurther $4.5 million over the next ten years to operate.

Construction of the new facility will begin this spring and the hatchery is expected to be in full operation by spring of 2014. 

The facility will be owned and operated by the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC. It will be built along the Nechako River, across from the only known spawning site for Nechako white sturgeon. 

Each year, the facility will release up to 12,000 juvenile sturgeon into the river in an effort to rebuild the population . The juveniles will be tagged prior to release to the river so their behaviour and survival can be closely monitored. 

Rio Tinto Alcan will cover an estimated $450,000 in annual operating costs over the next 10 years, $400,000 of which will come from the Nechako Environmental Enhancement Fund, established in 1997 to address the downstream impacts of Kenney Dam on the Nechako. 

In the 1960s, the Nechako River was home to an estimated 5,000 white sturgeon. Today fewer than 300 of these prehistoric creatures remain. The Nechako white sturgeon was declared an endangered species in 2003 and listed under the federal Species at Risk Act in 2006. 

Over the past 45 years, spawning rates for adult sturgeon have dropped far below levels needed to sustain the river’s sturgeon population. Sturgeon produced at similar facilities on the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers are showing excellent survival rates and similar results are expected on the Nechako