Conservation group frets as more caviar whets nation's appetite.

Byline: Scott Canon

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The two Missouri game wardens were only looking for fish bait to stock their raccoon trap late last year.

Referred to a Frohna, Mo., fisherman's place, they came across his catch of sturgeon, topped with two pale lunkers _ each obviously longer and fatter than the rest of the bony-backed batch.

The two big ones were pallid sturgeons, an endangered species being gutted to feed a demand for American caviar.

The remarkable thing, said conservation agent Rob Sulkowski, was that the caviar poacher was caught. Fishermen legally net tons of shovelnose sturgeon in Missouri annually, with little oversight as to whether the endangered and ghostly looking pallid sturgeon is being taken along with them.

"It's the first time …