Photo courtesy of Anna Kuperberg
In the summer of 2003, a wild coyote took up residence on San Francisco's Bernal Hill— a tiny patch of open space surrounded by houses, roads, and freeways. Where did he come from and how could he arrive at this small oasis of prairie grassland in the heart of a modern American city?
CLOSE UP VIEW OF COYOTE
Bernal Hill—Still Wild At Heart will explore the mystery and wonder of the coyote's surprising existence in this dense urban setting. This one-hour natural history film will show that the hill has supported animal and plant communities for millions of years, including such exotic creatures as mastodons, camels, grizzly bears, and eagles.

The history of humans' relationship to the hill began about 5,000 years ago with the Ohlone Indians. San Francisco's native plant and animal inhabitants shaped the Ohlone's physical, spiritual, and imaginative universe—which was in turn irreversibly altered by the arrival of the Spaniards in 1775 and the development of San Francisco into a major port city.

During the past century Bernal Hill has survived many onslaughts,including a plan to blast a tunnel through its very heart, illegal quarry mining in the 1940's, and the diversion of streams that once encircled the hill on three sides. But in the 1970's, a handful of residents took interest in the hill—which had been used as an unofficial garbage dump for decades—and restored it to the natural prairie grassland ecosystem that continues today.
Bernal Hill is now protected open space. It exists in a circlet of open spaces that allow for the passage and support of an unusually broad and varied urban wildlife population, including hawks, other coyotes, foxes, escaped South American parrots, and peregrine falcons. While some animal populations live and die on Bernal Hill, many others use it as a way station, a stop-over place to rest and rebuild depleted energy reserves. And people who visit the hill regularly to exercise or walk their dogs feel similarly restored.
Still Wild At Heart is a tribute to the resilience of this little hill and this wild coyote, and to the unique value and importance of their place in our community.