The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has just released a documentary about the recovery of lake sturgeon in the Red River Basin.
Titled “Kings of the North: Lake Sturgeon Recovery in the Red River,” the 30-minute documentary is available on the .
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The documentary is divided into nine chapters: “A Decimated Population,” “A Fractured River,” “Commercial Fishery,” “Reconnecting the Red,” “Egg Harvest and Hatcheries,” “Stocking and Monitoring,” “Re-establishing Populations,” “A Public Resource” and the final chapter, “Managing for the Future.”
Nick Kludt, Red River fisheries specialist for the DNR in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, provides most of the on-camera narrative for the documentary. Also featured are retired DNR fisheries personnel who played key roles in early efforts not only to restore the population, but remove or modify low-head dams and replace them with rock arch rapids structures that accommodate fish passage and improve human safety while still holding back water in places where that is needed.
The documentary also highlights the importance of partnerships between the DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Red Lake Nation and White Earth Nation natural resource departments and Rainy River First Nations at Manitou Rapids in Ontario, all of which have been crucial to recovery efforts.
Kludt and Kristi Coughlon, information for the DNR’s Northwest Region in Bemidji, are credited as producers, and Nick Frantzen of the DNR’s Office of Communications and Outreach in St. Paul is the documentary’s director, videographer and editor.
“I was extremely happy with how it turned out,” Kludt told the Herald in an interview.
While the documentary includes historic photos, file video from stocking efforts in the early 2000s and video shot in the spring of 2023 while collecting lake sturgeon eggs on the Rainy River, the project kicked into high gear in the fall of 2023 and wrapped up this spring with “some of those really good underwater shots,” Kludt said.
“You can really tell the difference between when the biologists try to take videos of things and when our actual Emmy-winning videographer takes videos of things,” Kludt said, referring to Frantzen. “And you can tell who the pros are because boy, did he do a good job.”
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The original plan, Kludt said, was to get a video record of the DNR’s sturgeon egg-take operation on the Rainy River in the spring of 2023, which marked the first time “the DNR had done that ourselves,” Kludt said.
Previously, the Manitou Rapids First Nations on the Ontario side of the Rainy River had collected the eggs for DNR stocking efforts.
But after seeing a video the Fish and Wildlife Service had put together on sturgeon restoration, DNR personnel decided they should produce their own documentary. The DNR has submitted the documentary to the American Fisheries Society for the organization’s annual film festival, Kludt says.
Additional video credits include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s video archive and “Minnesota Bound”/Ron Schara Productions.
To watch the documentary go to youtube.com and type “Minnesota Department of Natural Resources” in the search window.
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