There’s a big new development going up in Mountain View along the edge of San Francisco Bay. But it’s not a tech company headquarters or a condo project. It’s for birds and fish and hikers.

Workers are putting the finishing touches on a three-year effort to restore 435 acres of former industrial salt evaporation ponds to natural wetlands and tidal marshes, along with building new public bayfront hiking trails.

The $20 million project, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of December, is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga in which the state, federal government and environmental groups are slowly converting 15,100 acres of former salt ponds that ring the South Bay, Peninsula and East Bay back to habitat for ducks, shorebirds, fish, even leopard sharks, bat rays and harbor seals

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