Two species of Canadian game fish have been added to the endangered species list.

The lake sturgeon, a fish that dates back to the dinosaur age, is on the brink of extinction in Alberta, and chinook salmon are endangered in British Columbia's Okanagan region, according to the committee of experts who designate which wild species are in trouble.

Sport fishing for lake sturgeon, a torpedo-shaped, armour-plated species that can live up to 100 years, is already restricted in Alberta to catch-and-release in a narrow season, or a harvest of one fish per licence per year.

Provincial biologists estimate there are only about 1,000 of the fish left in the North Saskatchewan River and perhaps 5,000 in the South Saskatchewan.

The sturgeon fishery was closed in Alberta between 1940 and 1968 after the species was almost wiped out by gill nets and long-line anglers.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife says the fish, which can weigh more than 45 kilograms and grow up to 155 centimetres, is now officially endangered.

The committee, made up of wildlife scientists from governments and other organizations, also added one bird, an Atlantic marine fish, one moth, one butterfly and a flower to the endangered list.

They include:

Williamson's sapsucker, a woodpecker that lives in old-growth western larch forests, which are being lost to logging in British Columbia.

The population of winter skate fish in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The white flower moth and Ottoe skipper butterfly, "found on remnant prairie habitats."

A poppy, the white meconella, that grows among Garry oak trees in southeastern Vancouver Island. The committee said this plant is globally rare and is now endangered by loss of habitat because of housing developments and encroachment by alien species.

Lake sturgeon are also found in the Great Lakes, where they are considered a species of special concern because of their slow reproductive cycle. Females take 20 years to mature and they only spawn every four to six years.

"This species has been affected throughout most of its range by a variety of threats including historical over-harvest and habitat loss from the construction and operation of dams," the scientists reported after a meeting that ended on Friday in St. Pauls, Nfld.

The committee said it reviewed the Okanagan population of chinook salmon at the request of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, a First Nations organization.

It found those fish were now endangered and that "changes in fisheries downstream in the Columbia River are expected this summer [which] constitute a new and imminent threat to this population."

The committee's scale for judging plants and animals runs from "not at risk" to "special concern" (152 species), "threatened" (129), "endangered" (184), "extirpated" (22) and finally "extinct" (13).