Nature in the City Executive Director Amber Mahlberg recently visited the SF Gov TV recording studio with Christopher Campbell to record a story about McLaren Park, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. Christopher, who just retired after many years as SF Rec & Park’s Natural Resource Manager and probably knows more about SF’s most wild parks than anyone, shared these words: 

“Welcome to McLaren Park, San Francisco's second-largest park and one of the city's most important natural landscapes. For decades, these hills were shaped by grazing and other land uses. Today, through decades of restoration led by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, volunteers, scientists, and community partners, native habitats are recovering, and wildlife is returning.”

We were also honored to hear these beautiful, poetic words from Daniel Choi, SF Rec & Park’s Park Services, at Nature in the City’s Annual Community Picnic, held at McLaren Park’s Redwood Picnic Area in July 2026.

Barbara was a legend among Bay Area butterfly people and naturalists in general. More than 40 years ago she created an oasis in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood next to her home. The idea of “gardening for butterflies” was not on the public’s radar, and many of us unthinkingly associated the practice with fertilizers, tidy landscapes, and trimming dead flowers. Barbara’s approach was different.

For the past five years, UC Davis PhD student, Tali Caspi has been working on a study exploring what the native California species is actually eating, published in the scientific journal Ecosphere. Throughout her research, she’s heard her fair share of misconceptions about the maligned canine, but for the first time, she has the data to debunk them.

San Francisco is a small city. At just 49 square miles, it’s one of the most densely built cities in the country. Yet nature’s biodiversity is there to be found by those who pause long enough to look up and down or peer closely in our parks and at the trees and planters dotted about.

While nature is protected within San Francisco in many ways from natural disasters, how have our local ecosystems outside of the cities fared during the recent fires?