Photo: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/AP
The Hudson River has been one of America’s most important waterways but throughout the 20th century, it turned into a sewer for industrial waste (most notoriously when GE spent years cleaning up the toxic PCB it dumped in the river). However, as the Guardian reported, last June, researchers were shocked to discover some startling evidence of the river’s belated recovery: in searching for one of only 450 adult Atlantic sturgeons in the Hudson the team spotted the outline of an enormous 14ft, 80 year-old female sturgeon that indicated the health of the river is bouncing back. John Cronin, a fisherman turned conservationist and academic told the Guardian that “There’s no question that the Hudson is a cleaner river. There is a lot less pollution now. It’s an environmental success story but it’s an incomplete job, the work isn’t over. It’s not enough to reduce pollution: you need to restore the ecosystem…Right now we need more aggressive and ambitious laws and there is an administration and Congress in DC interested in weaker laws.”
April 2, 2019 » Hudson River, New York, sturgeon
