Our mission is to connect everyone in San Francisco to nature by cultivating and conserving local habitats.
Rapidly urbanizing San Francisco is a biodiversity hotspot. With so many colorful plants and animals sharing our home, we're dedicated to educating our community about urban wildlife and pioneering projects that encourage exploring and caring for local habitats. Find nature in San Francisco with our Nature in the City Map!
As a grassroots environmental nonprofit, we empower local communities—people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic strata by organizing habitat restoration stewardship projects; leading nature walks & events; offering habitat gardening services; and providing tools and educational resources for people to participate in citizen science and lifelong learning. Our open space advocacy work serves diverse San Francisco neighborhoods.
At Nature in the City, we deeply value our partnerships. We're enthusiastic about working with individuals and organizations who share our love for nature.
Will you help us restore habitat in your community? Together, let's explore and enhance nature in the city.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
Nature in the City is committed to connecting people from all over San Francisco with the natural habitats that surround them. While we are early in the process of figuring out the best ways to do this, we want to make sure that underserved community members, especially people of color, those who are socioeconomically vulnerable, and people with a range of abilities, have access to positive experiences in local nature.
We know that people of color have often felt unwelcome in parks and natural spaces, and the neighborhoods where many people of color and socioeconomically vulnerable residents live are less likely to have close-to-home access to nature and green space. We want to find the most effective ways to work to address the disparities in nature access that currently exist along socioeconomic and racial lines in order to ensure all people have the opportunity to benefit from connecting with nature.
We are working to expand our partnerships with other nature-focused groups and community-based organizations that share our commitment to creating more equitable access to nature in the city. We are committed to doing this without overburdening our partners.
Devastating events in 2020 have shown police violence against Black people in this country. As community members, it is important that we speak out against the relentless atrocities that we are bearing witness to that are unjust and inhumane.
Therefore, the Advisory Council and staff of Nature in the City condemn police brutality, institutionalized racism, white supremacy, and systemic injustices that have led to the deaths of too many Black people in the U.S. and globally.
We are committed to taking action in these ways:
Recruiting and retaining people of color for the Nature in the City staff, internships, and Advisory Council
Partnering with and learning from organizations that are dedicated to fighting racial injustice, particularly those serving San Francisco’s Black communities--without overburdening those organizations
Developing more projects that help ensure that Black people and other people of color have local access to nature
Collaborating with other institutions to create practices and materials to ensure Black and other people of color feel welcome in local nature
Nature in the City seeks new Advisory Council members from San Francisco's racially diverse communities. To express interest in volunteering for the Advisory Council, complete this form and/or send an email to info[at]natureinthecity.org.
Earth Island Institute is Nature in the City's fiscal sponsor.
Earth Island Institute has been a hub since 1982 for grassroots projects and campaigns dedicated to conserving, preserving, and restoring the ecosystems on which our civilization depends.
Our work is deeply rooted in San Francisco.
Founder Peter Brastow started Nature in the City in 2005 to build, strengthen and unify the movement to conserve San Francisco's natural areas and restore biological diversity. Nature in the City has sought to catalyze ecological restoration and stewardship in San Francisco by connecting urban people and nature, right where we live. Peter entered the fray of the city's environmental activist community with a unique set of skills and experience, as an urban natural resource manager and community stewardship coordinator, from his former position as the Presidio's National Park Service Ecological Restoration Specialist.
