P-22 holiday sweaters, P-22 murals. P-22 tattoos. P-22 songs. To me, it all seemed a bit too Hollywood. Like branding the next Disney character.
If you somehow missed this major chapter in L.A. history, P-22 was the famed mountain lion thought to have crossed two major freeways to make a home in Griffith Park in 2012.
The celebrity cat, who left this world in 2022, is the subject of the first episode of the LAist Studios’ newest podcast Lions, Coyotes & Bears, debuting today and available on our website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
P-22’s existence was remarkable, in part, because of the freeway crossings — two dead mountain lions have been found in the past two months on the same freeways, one on the 101 and one on the 405. And also because biologists thought Griffith Park, at about 7 square miles, was way too small a territory for an adult, male mountain lion. And he had no potential mates!
But P-22 stayed in Griffith Park — for 10 years, the remainder of his lifetime. He was a survivor. The perfect mascot for a city of immigrants, celebrities, and dreamers.
Nevertheless, cynical journalist that I am (maybe too cynical), when my own radio station and this very website chronicled P-22's antics during those years (the Los Feliz crawlspace!) and those of his followers (Beth Pratt's P-22 tattoo!), I tuned out. I couldn't see past the hype.
So when my colleague Emily Guerin, one of the forces behind LAist Studios' Imperfect Paradise, proposed doing a podcast about Southern California's complicated relationship with charismatic, large predators, I was planning to tell a whole different story, one that asked this question: Has California gone overboard for mountain lions? (I was prepared for lots of hate mail.)
So, has California gone overboard for mountain lions?
I came to this question while reporting last year on the highly endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep and the steep decline in their population after an unusually harsh winter. The bighorn that year were faced with an impossible choice: stay at high elevation and face starvation and avalanches, or move to lower elevation and face the super-powerful jaws of mountain lions.
When I was researching the story, several wildlife biologists who work on bighorn sheep recovery told me it had gotten increasingly difficult to get permission to euthanize or relocate mountain lions that picked off large numbers of bighorn. This is despite the fact, they said, that state law allows for killing mountain lions in order to facilitate bighorn sheep recovery. (Tim Daly, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said there has been no change in policy regarding mountain lion management for the bighorn recovery program. What to do about mountain lions that prey on endangered bighorn is decided on a "case-by-case basis," he said.)
John Wehausen, who heads the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Foundation, said mountain lions had "become the sacred cow of California," even though their populations across the state — with the very notable exception of Southern California — are considered stable.
How mountain lions went from vermin to superstars
Mountain lions were not always so loved in California, at least since European settlers arrived. While native people thought of mountain lions as "part of the congress of living things," as historian Dan Flores put it, Europeans considered mountain lions — and all large predators in North America — either dangerous or a nuisance, or both.
Livestock were easy prey for the big cats. And mountain lions do, on rare occasion, attack people. Later, mountain lions were considered competition for sport hunters, taking down the same deer that hunters wanted to bag.
These facts were used to justify what's come to be known as the "war against predators," which began pretty much as soon as Europeans landed on the continent, Flores told us.
Starting in the early 1900s, the state of California paid bounty hunters to kill mountain lions. By the time the program was canceled in 1963, more than 12,000 mountain lions had been offed.
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By then, there was a growing realization that predators kept the ecosystem in balance.
In 1990, California voters approved a ballot proposition making mountain lions a "specially protected" species, meaning they can't be hunted. It's a political designation, rather than a scientific one, like a big stamp on the state proclaiming, "We heart mountain lions."
Mountain lions have gotten even greater protections since then. Outside of the bighorn sheep program, one of the very few reasons you can legally kill a mountain lion in California is if it's a threat to humans.
THE mountain lion superstar, P-22
All this background brings me back to P-22. As I learned while reporting the story for the podcast, his extended clan in the Santa Monica Mountains is, arguably, in nearly as much trouble as the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep.
I learned through my reporting that P-22 likely did more to advance the cause of his beleaguered kin — and a whole host of other wildlife — than any other animal before or since him.
In fact, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the state in 2019 to list the mountain lions of the Central and Southern California coast as "threatened" under the California Endangered Species Act. That would force public officials to consider the effects of development and highway projects on mountain lions.
The petition is still pending.
In the meantime, I learned through my reporting that P-22 likely did more to advance the cause of his beleaguered kin — and a whole host of other wildlife — than any other animal before or since him. Some very savvy humans who care deeply about the wildlife we coexist with in Southern California saw the potential in P-22's story and used it to build a genuine movement.
It's a movement that simultaneously — and to date — helps Angelenos understand and care for the animals we share space with, and, on a practical level, raised a boatload of money for a wildlife crossing that could very well save the Santa Monica mountain lions from death by inbreeding.
Wildlife ecologists say there's so much more to do, which we'll talk about a lot in the last episode of Lions, Coyotes, & Bears. But on a consciousness level, I think, we're moving in the right direction.
And that's thanks, in large part, to the "Brad Pitt of the cougar world," P-22.
Where does that reference come from? You'll have to listen to the podcast.
Listen to the Episode 1: Lions, Coyotes, & Bears
