After releasing another 1,471 young pallid sturgeon in the upper basin of the Missouri River this week, Rob Holm hopes he bought more time for the prehistoric and endangered fish.

The offspring of brood stock at the Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery in Riverdale, the young pallids were poured into their native waters Wednesday at five locations, two on the Yellowstone River and three on the Missouri River, said Holm, the hatchery's project leader, onFriday.

That tagging and stocking project pushed the number of young pallids tagged and released this fall to more than 9,100.

The hatchery continues to hold another 5,000 young pallids that will be tagged and stocked in the spring after they've grown bigger.

The wild pallid population in the Missouri River's upper reach is estimated at 200.

"We know those fish will be extinct in a few years," Holm said. "If we can get enough pallids into the river with enough genetic diversity, we will have 50 more years to address the issues."

One of those issues is recruitment, or young pallids surviving to join the adult breeding population.

If a spawn produces 100,000 eggs, the hope would be to get two back as adults that will spawn in 15 or 20 years.

"If you look at the wild population, it's not happening now," he said. "We're not having any adults spawn and having one egg make it back to replace them."

One problem is the Intake Diversion Dam on the Yellowstone River, downstream from Glendive, Mont., Holm said.

It's a dead end for pallids swimming up the Yellowstone to spawn.

The fix would be a ladder that would let pallids move upstream or downstream "without going through a gauntlet of rocks," Holm said.

Allowing pallids to swim - and more importantly, spawn - farther upstream improves the odds for the survival of just-hatched larval-stage pallids, which are dispersed by drifting downstream.

That drift now carries the larva into the headwaters of Lake Sakakawea, where "habitat is not there for them," Holm said.

"It's so silted in that they probably suffocate there. They also are bottom feeders and feeding in six feet of muck isn't conducive to survival."

If the pallids spawn farther upstream, the larva drift will finish farther upstream, keeping the young pallids out of the deadly silt.

Modifying that intake dam is Holm's No. 1 priority.

"I think it gives us the best chance for recovery," he said.

The modification to the intake dam won't happen overnight, Holm added, rather "within the next decade." The Iraq war, hurricane relief and other natural disasters have made funding for such projects tough to come by.

But Holm is patient, saying that hatchery spawning will continue to put pallids into the Missouri River system.

"I would rather have them spawning on their own, then we could get back to raising walleyes."

(Reach reporter Richard Hinton at 701-250-8256 or richard.hinton@;bismarcktribune.com.)