Point Reyes sits at the western edge of Marin County, California, a pick-axe shaped peninsula that juts between the pounding waves of the Pacific. It’s a landscape of stark beauty; a patchwork of windswept headlands, broad leeward bays, wildflower-strewn meadows, and dripping evergreen forest. State and federal agencies list more than a hundred plant and animal species within the park as threatened or endangered, among them the California red-legged frog, western snowy plover, and coho salmon. This natural richness draws around 2 million visitors a year.

When the sun obliges, the view from the south end of Sunset Reservoir on 26th Avenue and Quintara offers a particularly American sparkle. The blue Pacific gleams to the west, the Golden Gate Bridge glows red to the north, and over San Francisco’s largest reservoir glitters, white-hot, a solar field of 24,000 photovoltaic panels. On a recent Saturday, though, a small blur smudged Old Glory. And then the smudge moved, trotting with a lope that most San Franciscans have come to recognize. In yet another feat of amazing urban adaptation for this animal, a pair of coyotes have chosen to den on an 11-acre concrete waterbed, tucked under five annual megawatts’ worth of crackling solar energy in the heart of San Francisco’s Sunset District. Depending on whom you ask, their presence is to be feared, ignored, respected, or celebrated.

Living in a town so intertwined with nature allows residents to hike desolate trails, ski wide open slopes and swim in crystal clear waters. With the privilege to reside in the wilderness comes the responsibility of sharing with non-human inhabitants.

As a scientist advocating for evidence-based decision-making, I’m doing everything I can to promote Roxy’s Law, Senate Bill 32, to ban public lands trapping, snaring and poisoning in New Mexico.

As a Marin County-based conservation photographer and wildlife educator, I spend many hours observing wildlife. Bobcats are without question my favorite species to watch and photograph.