Approximately how old must female White Sturgeon be to reach sexual maturity?
Answer
15 to 20 years old, sometimes older
A key characteristic of the White Sturgeon's life history strategy is extremely slow maturation, which directly impacts population recovery rates. Specifically, females are noted as potentially not reaching sexual maturity until they are between 15 and 20 years of age, and in some cases, even older than that benchmark. This slow reproductive cycling means that when populations face high rates of removal, such as historical overfishing or modern habitat loss, the rate of replacement is profoundly slow. A decline in recruitment today will not translate into a population crisis until decades later, and the subsequent recovery period requires management patience spanning generational timescales.
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