The Sacramento River's winter-run chinook salmon, considered one of California's most imperiled fishes, may be saved through a proposed new captive-rearing program that involves UC Davis' Bodega Marine Laboratory. Viewed as a "time-buying measure" for the species until water conditions in the Sacramento River improve, the collaborative project involves state and federal agencies as well as the campus's marine facility in Bodega and the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. Through the program, approximately 1,000 juvenile salmon raised in a national fish hatchery near Anderson, Calif., would be transferred to Bodega Marine Laboratory as well as to Steinhart. In special aquatic research facilities, these young salmon would be reared through the fresh- and saltwater phases of their lives and then be transferred to the hatchery for spawning. The project, expected to begin by this fall, is being compared to the captive breeding program for the endangered California condor, in which survivors of the species were removed from the wild for reproduction under controlled conditions, with the animals' offspring eventually being released into the wild.