Of course, there is urban wildlife outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. Everywhere, people are very excited about the wildlife that is returning to their towns after many years of absence.

        On August first, my husband and I drove 45 minutes to Martinez where they were having a “Beaver Fest”, a celebration of three years of beavers in their Alhambra Creek. After the beavers built their dams, other critters began arriving: otters, muskrats, green heron, turtles and mink -- the creek has become a real habitat!!  “Martinez is a very welcoming city, and obviously we have room for everyone.” Read the newspaper article that lured us to Martinez: BEAVER. The horse below was at the festival. The kayak is going over the beaver dam -- Robert regularly clears the creek of debris left by humans. The wild turkeys were outside of Crocket, on the road to Port Costa.

        Petaluma is about an hour drive from San Francisco. They have a badger colony, which apparently has lived in a field on Paula Lane since about 1900. The recent change is that sensitive citizens have come together to protect the badgers by ensuring that their habitat remains a safe-haven for their use always. We went to this area to check out the badgers, who are nocturnal. Although we waited until well after dark, we saw no badgers, but we did see plenty of their dens/burrows which can be seen below. The openings are about 8” in diameter.  If you want to read about saving the badger habitat, you can click here:  BADGER.

        Mountain Lions, though I have yet to see one, are as close to San Francisco as the Berkeley Hills. The sign here was seen at Purisima Creek Redwoods, at Half Moon Bay.

The gray fox had been hit on Lone Pine Road on the way to Sebastopol. Please keep your eyes open for wildlife attempting to cross the roadways.

        The roadway to Mount Tamalpais had wild turkeys. There were also rattle snakes, but we didn’t see any.

        On this page I will add urban wildlife that is close to, but not within the Bay Area.