Susan Zakin

Susan Zakin is the author of Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement, which is being reissued this spring by University of Arizona Press. A former Bay Area resident who now lives in Tucson, Zakin's work has appeared in Salon, Orion, Mother Jones, Vogue, and the New York Times.

Butterflies and Bulldozers on an Island of Time

April 1, 2002 •  by

San Bruno Mountain rises along the southern border of San Francisco, remnant of an ecosystem that once covered much of this peninsula. The mountain provides a tenuous refuge for some of the rare plants and endangered butterflies that have lost much of their former habitat. And it beckons to people who want a taste of the San Francisco peninsula as it was before Europeans arrived.