Efforts to restore New York's population of lake sturgeon have proved to be slow but successful, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Dawn Dittman, a biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, with a female sturgeon at Lake Oneida.A researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey's Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Sciences discovered two egg-bearing sturgeon in Oneida Lake in April -- the first females to reach maturity since restoration efforts began 20 years ago. Two more have since been found in Northern New York's Oswegatchie River.

The fish were raised in a hatchery and released in 1995 by the state DEC in an effort to foster population growth of the threatened species. As female sturgeon take 15-25 years to reach reproductive age, restoration efforts have been slow and the discovery of mature females has been praised as a milestone.

Lake sturgeon, New York's largest freshwater fish, may live to be 80 years old and can grow to be 7 feet long and over 300 pounds. Once so abundant that they would obstruct boat traffic in rivers and fisherman would stack them up to rot on the shore, sturgeon are now down to about one percent of their pre-1850 population, due to a high demand for their meat, caviar and leather-like skin.