Description
When you sponsor a 2025 sturgeon online, the system reserves a fish for you to release at Sturgeon Fest 2025 in late September.
We also have unsponsored sturgeons from previous release years. Many of them have sighting reports in the past few years. Select a previous year in the option drop down to sponsor one of these older fish.
Your sponsorship also serves as a donation to support this important work to return a sturgeon population to the Milwaukee River!
Riveredge Nature Center powers the Milwaukee River Lake Sturgeon Rehabilitation Program in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. This 25-year project began in 2006, and utilizes a Streamside Rearing Facility to raise the fish on-site at Riveredge. The lake sturgeon were almost fully extirpated, or regionally extinct, from the Milwaukee River, where historic population levels fell to less than 1% due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and poaching. Thanks to this program and others like it, we are beginning to see encouraging signs that lake sturgeon can be restored to their native home.
Why are lake sturgeon so special?
In addition to being a species of cultural significance for the region’s indigenous people, sturgeon are an incredible marvel of the natural world. They are the largest fish species in the Great Lakes, topping out at an astonishing 7-foot length and 250 pound weight. Their long life span means a sturgeon could live to see an entire century! The sturgeon’s ancient physiology also makes them notable: they have an armor of scutes rather than scales, and look almost shark-like. In fact, their anatomy has changed very little since the time of the dinosaurs. Sturgeon are also important to the food chain, predating on benthic organisms at the bottom of the lake or river bed.
