1,500 young sturgeon, poured from buckets into a river that once lost them

At the Port of Rochester on Wednesday, about a hundred onlookers watched New York's conservation department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service release 1,500 young lake sturgeon into the Genesee River. Most were about a year old, raised from eggs at hatcheries in Wisconsin and New York, and some children got to pour a fish from a bucket off the dock themselves. Lake sturgeon were considered gone from this river by the late 1980s, worn down by overfishing and dirty water. Releases that began in 2003 — about 9,000 fish in all — are now bringing adults back to spawn, and females of this species can live up to 80 years, so today's fingerlings could still be swimming here in 2100.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program