A Badger Was Spotted in San Francisco for the First Time in Living Memory

You’d expect to spot a badger in the Midwest plains, or maybe skulking across some rural highway in Idaho. What you would not expect is to see one waddling through a forgotten lot in the middle of San Francisco’s Twin Peaks. Yet here we are.

At 12:47 a.m. on June 17, 2021, cameras captured a living, breathing American badger in an overgrown lot long mislabeled as 4512 23rd Street. The address itself is outdated, but the wildlife is very real. According to the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA, which reviewed the footage, this is the first confirmed sighting of a badger anywhere near San Francisco in anyone’s living memory. Even the SPCA dispatcher admitted they were shocked and “excited” to see one turn up on video.

“I’ve never seen one in SF, ” said Dominik Mosur, Animal Care Specialist with the Randall Museum and part-time naturalist who tracks populations of birds and other wildlife around the City. “There are no records for the City after probably the late 1800s. During the pandemic road closures, animals like Long-tailed Weasels, Gray Foxes, and Burrowing owls showed up at sites where they hadn’t been noted in many years, and this American Badger sighting may be related to this dispersal phenomenon.”

The sighting wasn’t just a quirky one-off. It marked the first confirmed Great American Badger sighting in the city of San Francisco, ever.

Some urban-adjacent records were made in the summer of 2022, when juvenile badgers were briefly spotted in grassy habitats in the Bay Area, but those encounters were fleeting and lacked the same street-level confirmation. Further back, any sightings were logged east of San Francisco around Mount Diablo. None broke into city limits.

This makes the footage all the more extraordinary. After years of sparse, near-ish-by reports, San Francisco finally has its first badger on film.

American badgers still exist in California’s grasslands and open spaces, but habitat loss keeps their numbers low. Camera traps on San Bruno Mountain and preserves in the East Bay confirm occasional activity; however, sightings remain sparse and are primarily located outside dense urban cores.

That’s why the Twin Peaks video stands apart. It’s not just another “wild animal wanders through town” moment. It’s a once-in-a-generation event that drops San Francisco directly onto the badger map.

If Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows had a local chapter, it would be set right here. Forget the woods and riverbanks: picture chain link, tangled shrubs, and a few discarded beer cans. In recent months, the lot has proven itself a crowded neighborhood, hosting rare, returning, and everyday species side by side. The confirmed roll call includes skunks, raccoons, coyotes, red-shouldered hawks, barn owls, the city’s famous wild parrots, and a rotating cast of unconfirmed critters that drift in and out of the frame. It’s less a vacant lot than a very exclusive open-air co-op, where the buy-in is simply showing up with fur, feathers, or talons.

Think about it. Where else in this city, or maybe anywhere, do you find an owl, a hawk, a wild parrot, a coyote, a skunk, a raccoon, and now a badger all living in the same little patch of earth? Twin Peaks has become a sort of urban ark—a Noah’s Park.

San Francisco already has its animal celebrities. The sea lions at Pier 39. The Telegraph Hill parrots. The coyotes of Golden Gate Park casually trotting past roller skaters. Each has its place in the city’s folklore.

But a badger? That’s another tier. This is the rarest of rare wildlife encounters. An animal that doesn’t even belong in the city somehow carved out space in one of the densest urban cores in the country.

This isn’t a call to trek up the hill with flashlights and binoculars. The badger doesn’t need fans. What it does need, along with the others, is to be remembered as part of San Francisco’s living history.

When people talk about the city’s wild side, they usually mean nightlife or rent prices. But here, tucked behind chain link and weeds, is a reminder that San Francisco isn’t just quirky. It’s ecologically surreal.

So if you’re keeping score, yes. San Francisco is now officially badger country. One more notch in the city’s folklore. And for the record, the lot at 4512 23rd Street now houses more verified species than most small forests.

In a city that loves to brag, that feels like something worth sharing.

So next time someone tells you San Francisco is dead, remind them: the badgers just moved in.