Oakland, Calif.—The White Sturgeon of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is one of the most treasured fish species among anglers in California. Known for its hard battles and jumps, as well as for its fine table fare, anglers are now restricted into catch and release fishing for these prehistoric giants as the Department of Fish and Wildlife comes up with a sturgeon management plan.
I have spent hundreds of hours fishing for these behemoths and have caught dozens of these fish over the decades, but this fishery is now on the decline. The sturgeon populations has had its periods of boom and busts, since the ideal spawning conditions for sturgeon occur only high water years. The population of adult “keeper” size sturgeon rose to a historic height of around 200,000 by the early 2000s, but has declined since then.
With this decline in mind, the San Francisco Baykeeper, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Restore the Delta, and Friends of the River on Feb. 12 filed a lawsuit against the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Secretary of the US Department of the Interior for “failing to deliver a legally required initial determination whether or not to list the San Francisco Bay’s population of White Sturgeon as a threatened species.”
“This marks one of the first legal actions against the new Trump Administration under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). It will serve as an early indicator of how this administration will act—or fail to act—to protect the San Francisco Bay estuary’s fish and wildlife, and one of North America’s imperiled iconic species,” according to a statement from the groups.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service is required to respond to petitions to list species under the ESA within one year, and that deadline is past. The Trump Administration’s executive orders can’t change that reality or circumvent basic requirements of the law,” said Eric Buescher, Baykeeper managing attorney.
Buescher said the legal deadline is mandatory under federal statute because the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a finding that a petition filed by the coalition presented substantial information that listing the species may be warranted.
“San Francisco Bay and its watershed are home to the only known reproductive population of White Sturgeon in California. Excessive diversions of fresh water from the Bay’s tributary rivers have decimated the Bay’s White Sturgeon population. White Sturgeon requires high river flows in order to reproduce successfully. Regular overfishing and lethal algae outbreaks in the Bay have also contributed to the sturgeon’s dramatic decline,” Buescher stated.
The California Fish and Game Commission granted White Sturgeon endangered species protections under the California Endangered Species Act in 2024, pending a required one-year status review and final decision.
“However, state agencies under Governor Newsom must still enact a science-based water management plan that guarantees the Bay will receive adequate freshwater flows. Also, the Governor must resist federal agencies’ attempts to override state authority over water use,” Buescher continued.
White Sturgeon are North America’s largest freshwater fish. On July 9, 1983, Joey Pallotta of Crockett, California caught the world record white sturgeon weighing 468 pounds while fishing from his boat in San Pablo Bay in Contra Costa County. These magnificent fish can live for up to 100 years.
Worried about the impact anglers were having by taking the largest and oldest sturgeon from the breeding populations, my former boss, the late Hal Bonslett, and I went to many Fish and Game Commission meetings in the 1980’s to pressure the Commission to set a maximum size limit for sturgeon of 72 inches to preserve the larger breeding populations. Over the years, the minimum size limit, formerly 40 inches, and the maximum size limit, formerly 72 inches, were changed several times to preserve the sturgeon populations.
However, with the massive increase in state and federal water project exports out of the Delta that began in the early 2000s as acreage for almonds and other water-intensive crops increased in the Central Valley, the sturgeon, along with Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, striped bass and Delta and long fin smelt, began a long period of decline.
Current water diversions from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and the Delta reduce the robust river flows that White Sturgeon, salmon, steelhead and other fish need to successfully reproduce.
“At the same time, the state plans to build new diversions—including Sites Reservoir and the Delta Tunnel—which represent an imminent threat to the White Sturgeon, as well as other native fish, including Central Valley Chinook Salmon that support the state’s coastal salmon fishery,” Buescher noted.
Representatives from the groups commented on the lawsuit that has been filed to protect the White Sturgeon.
“The biggest threat to the White Sturgeon’s survival has been the neglect—even downright hostility—from the government agencies that are supposed to protect our Bay and its fishes,” said Jon Rosenfield, PhD, Baykeeper science director and lead author of the petition to list White Sturgeon as threatened. “Recently, Governor Newsom followed President Trump’s lead, ordering state agencies to ignore environmental rules that protect San Francisco Bay’s clean water, native fish, and communities from the negative effects of unsustainable water diversions.”
“This highlights the need to protect the Bay’s White Sturgeon under both the federal and state endangered species acts. White Sturgeon have been around for over 40 million years, but they may not survive Newsom’s race with Trump to eviscerate safeguards for the Bay’s water,” Rosenfield emphasized.
Gary Bobker, Friends of the River program director, explained the sturgeon’s crash in the context of other native species.
“From a tiny fish (Delta Smelt) that lives one year to a giant (White Sturgeon) that lives for up to a century, the native fish populations of the San Francisco Bay estuary are crashing,” Bobker pointed out. “Sturgeon shouldn’t have to wait even one more year for the federal protections they need to survive and flourish so that they will be around in a hundred years, providing material and spiritual nourishment for future generations.”
Ivan Senock, Restore the Delta deputy director, highlighted the key role that White Sturgeon and other native fish species hold in Tribal communities.
“In my experience working with Tribal communities in the Delta and Northern California, the White Sturgeon is a culturally significant species like all native species that have connections to Indigenous peoples of California. Loss of significant populations threatens the cultural, spiritual, and historical integrity of Tribal lives in the estuary,” Senock concluded.
The lawsuit to list White Sturgeon follows the news that zero Delta Smelt, an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies for supposedly being a “worthless fish,” have been caught in the CDFW’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for the seventh year in a row: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...
Meanwhile, salmon fishing on California’s ocean and river waters has been closed for the past two years and may be closed again this year, due to the collapse of Sacramento River and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations. Likewise, Sacramento River winter-run and spring-run Chinook salmon are moving closer and closer to extinction, due to massive water exports from the Delta and other factors.
