The Climate & Action Center
Act locally. Heal globally. Begin here.
Overview
Located within the repurposed historic Mother’s Building, The Climate & Action Center is the beating heart of the EcoPark—where history, justice, and the future converge. Once a symbol of the old zoo, the building is reborn as a civic hub for climate education, community organizing, and environmental action. This is the mother’s building of the EcoPark in every sense: a place to gather, grieve, build, and imagine.
Honoring the original architecture while equipped with cutting-edge green technology, the Center links San Francisco’s ecological future to its complex past—including the legacy of animal captivity. It invites visitors to engage with that history, and to co-create new narratives of care, resilience, and collective transformation.
Why This Matters
The Climate & Action Center doesn’t erase the zoo’s past—it transforms it. Land once used to contain life becomes a launchpad for liberation, care, and civic imagination. This is more than an exhibit: it’s a living institution where memory becomes movement, and where the urgency of climate justice meets the power of public participation.
By blending historic architecture with regenerative design, and pairing ecological truth-telling with real tools for action, the Center becomes a blueprint for how cities can confront the past and build something radically better—for all beings.
What You’ll Experience
Workshops and teach-ins on climate action, water justice, waste reduction, green jobs, and local environmental policy.
Flexible gathering spaces for public meetings, community celebrations, youth summits, and movement-building.
A storytelling theater and media lab, screening youth-made films, climate oral histories, and archival footage from the zoo’s past.
Immersive exhibits connecting neighborhood-level environmental justice to global climate impacts and frontline solutions.
Restored architectural elements, merged with sustainable infrastructure: solar panels, green roofs, and net-zero water systems.
Digital action kiosks, empowering visitors to join campaigns, contact decision-makers, support frontline groups
Rotating installations featuring Indigenous knowledge holders, youth activists, climate artists, and rewilding visionaries.
A deep reckoning space, inviting reflection on the site’s legacy—from confinement and control to restoration and freedom.
Be part of reimagining how SF cares for the wild.
Support the transformation of the San Francisco Zoo into a living EcoPark — a place rooted in care, creativity, and coexistence.
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Change starts here — in our city, for our planet.