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About Nature in the City

Nature in the City, a project of Earth Island Institute, is San Francisco's first organization wholly dedicated to ecological conservation, restoration and stewardship of the Franciscan bioregion.

Program Areas
Supporters
Background

Program Areas

 

Corresponding to the strategies for achieving our mission, our three major program areas are:

· Public Education
· Habitat Restoration & Community Stewardship
· Conservation Advocacy 

whereby we,

· Educate city dwellers, stewards, visitors and civic leaders about San Francisco's natural heritage

· Catalyze, nurture and support the citizen network of community-based ecological stewardship, and direct native habitat stewardship projects in threatened natural areas throughout the city.

· Organize & promote grassroots advocacy to all government jurisdictions to achieve strong legal protection and comprehensive ecological restoration of our urban ecosystems and biodiversity.

· Facilitate land management agency ecological best practices and inter-agency coordination for natural resources protection, stewardship, and ecological restoration.

Supporters

 <$1000

California Native Plant Society
Cole Hardware
Friends of McLaren Park
Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council
San Francisco Parks Trust
Sierra Club, San Francisco Group
Tree Frog Treks

>$1000
Foundation for Ecology and Culture
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
Kimball Foundation
J. Michael Nitschke Fund
Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI)
San Francisco Foundation

Members &
Major Donors

Background

San Francisco is often described as the epicenter of the global environmental movement. The United Nations held World Environment Day 2005 (WED) in San Francisco, in part to honor the region's unique role and history of contributions to environmentalism and global ecological sustainability. Specifically, San Francisco hosted WED for the City's role in urban environmental sustainability.

But is the City doing all it can for San Francisco's natural environment? 

Are we leading the world in local urban nature and biodiversity conservation?

During WED, an ad-hoc coalition of local ecological organizations hosted the Nature in the City Symposium in order to spotlight the fundamental contribution that urban nature conservation and ecological restoration make to ecological sustainability, local and global.

San Francisco is located within a global biodiversity hotspot. Several resource agencies in San Francisco are part of the Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve, a unit of UNESCO's Program on Man and the Biosphere (MAB).  Since we are on the verge of a potential global climate catastrophe, San Francisco, like all cities and communities, has to coevolve in better harmony with the regional and global natural environments. 

While thinking globally and regionally, we must remember that our biodiversity hotspot is right here in the City! Social and ecological transformation begins at home. Can people live sustainably and be in harmony with their local environment without restoring and stewarding local natural processes and habitats? We have our own local ecological crisis. We have to restore our natural communities. Local nature conservation and ecological restoration is critical to urban and global ecological sustainability.