A fixture of Western San Francisco, the Great Highway is home to a diverse ecosystem of sand dunes, native plants, and wildlife. Birds, butterflies, and other animals use this narrow corridor to travel between Golden Gate Park and Lake Merced, making it one of the most critical ecological connections between the largest open spaces in San Francisco.
In October, SFEI published a new short report: “Future Opportunities for the Great Highway – What are the Benefits for People and Nature?” which makes management and design recommendations for the Upper Great Highway that aim to support both ecology and recreation under three planning scenarios. The report found that while all planning scenarios for the Great Highway present some opportunities to enhance or protect ecosystem health, closing the roadway to cars entirely has the greatest and most immediate ecological benefits. The Great Highway report followed 2023’s Growing Resilience, which made recommendations for revegetation dunes to improve biodiversity and sea level rise resilience along Ocean Beach.
With the recent passage of Proposition K, there is an exciting opportunity to make many of the recommendations in both of these reports a reality. These include recommendations for restoration and revegetation of the dune habitat around the Highway, as well as trash management, lighting adjustments, fencing, and educational signage. Enacted together, these actions could have significant benefits for wildlife and public engagement and stewardship of this iconic roadway and soon-to-be park.
In the lead-up to the November 2024 election, multiple news outlets cited the report in their coverage of San Francisco’s Proposition K, which proposed to permanently close the Upper Great Highway to vehicle traffic. Coverage included a KQED article and radio spot, as well as a San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed. Growing Resilience also received coverage from Grist, which featured an interview with SFEI’s Ellen Plane.
Both reports were published as part of the Sunset Natural Resilience Project.
