�������t¶��

It continued when they were hauled about 50 miles north to a hatchery in Fillmore, where they hung out until 266 of them made it to Arroyo Hondo the following month.

For decades, government-run hatcheries in the Central Valley have reared and released millions of salmon each year to help boost their numbers.

In October, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife constructed a series of nests along the 12-mile stretch of gravel riverbed and then filled them with fertilized Chinook salmon eggs from a nearby hatchery.

They’ll need to be transferred into hatchery trucks outfitted with large tanks.

Now the delta smelt is functionally extinct in the wild, the species preserved only through a state and federal hatchery program, the success of which is uncertain.