Newspapers as sources of historical information about lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque, 1817)

As part of an attempt to reconstruct the original distribution and relative abundance of lake sturgeon in tributaries to Lake Michigan, old newspapers were surveyed for accounts of sturgeon captured by sport and commercial fishers. The reliability of this process was assessed in several ways. A historical column in a modern newspaper (De Pere journal) proved useful for identifying the time period during which original accounts of sturgeon were first published (late 1800s–early 1900s) and the season when most historical catches occurred (the spring spawning season), but a complete survey of the original newspapers revealed many more records than resurfaced in the historical column and some significant accounts that were published outside of the spawning season. Independent surveys of De Pere newspapers by different searchers revealed that the average searcher found a majority of known records (more than 90%). The seasonal distribution of catches in the Lower Fox River as revealed by historical newspaper accounts was very similar to that based on modern sightings, and the newspaper contained several accounts of sturgeon in other parts of the drainage or other parts of Wisconsin. However, comparison with newspapers published in the neighbouring community of Green Bay revealed that the latter included few of the incidents reported in the De Pere paper, and few additional accounts appeared in the Green Bay papers that were not reported in De Pere. Although the De Pere newspaper accounts taken alone reveal a history of sturgeon exploitation in this microcosm remarkably parallel to patterns of sturgeon exploitation nationwide, our initial focus on the De Pere paper appears to have been fortuitous in that few local newspapers along the Lake Michigan shoreline would have yielded comparable amounts of historical information.