Mark Grossi

FRESNO, Calif. -- Reviving chinook salmon on the San Joaquin River will cost more than $20 million -- which may sound like a lot of money for 40,000 fish. But this rare project will take years of work, scientists say.

Three-quarters of those fish will be spring-run salmon, a threatened species already in danger of extinction in California. In the San Joaquin, the fish will have to survive in the southernmost salmon fishery on the continent -- where the water sometime gets a little too warm for them.

Scientists say they haven't found similar reintroductions of the threatened spring-run salmon in a river like the San Joaquin, which had been dry in places for more than a half century. Federal officials need to breed a resilient fish for this river.

In February, federal officials began revealing details of the project that will include a $14.5 million hatchery near Friant Dam and more than $7 million to operate it for a decade.

FRESNO, Calif. -- Scientists have long known that endangered San Joaquin kit foxes live in Bakersfield, raiding dumpsters for half-eaten hot dogs, doughnuts and burritos.

Now it turns out that this critter has adapted to city life, eating an essentially human diet -- and thriving.

The kit fox -- protected in the 1960s even before the Endangered Species Act -- grows bigger and lives longer than foxes in the wild. The only downside for these city-dwelling foxes is high cholesterol.

A study, published in December in the Journal of Mammology, revealed the surprising results, said Bryan Cypher, research ecologist and kit fox expert in Bakersfield for the last 20 years.