I've been following a story for a couple of weeks, of a twelve-or-so-year-old mountain lion known as P-22 (P for Puma, 22 for the 22nd Santa Monica Mountains mountain lion radio-collared by National Park Service biologists) who lived smack-dab in the middle of Los Angeles, in urban Griffith Park, 6 square miles in size. The normal range for a mountain lion is 25 square miles and way up; his tiny range guaranteed that he would not find a mate.
Today, after suffering injuries from being hit last week by a car on Hollywood's Los Feliz Boulevard, and because of general ill health, P-22 was, sadly, euthanized. As a press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife puts it, "Mountain lion P-22 has had an extraordinary life and captured the hearts of the people of Los Angeles and beyond. The most difficult, but compassionate choice was to respectfully minimize his suffering and stress by humanely ending his journey." Here is an obituary from the Los Angeles Times. And here is an LAT story about his start in life in Griffith Park. The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area also issued a statement today, as did the New York Times and the Washington Post. This was one well-known cat.
I found a short, very informative documentary film about P-22, posted on YouTube last July (though I'm not sure just when it was made):
And finally, here is a eulogy by Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation (featured in the above film), which I quote in full mainly because it's the first account I saw today of P-22's end, but also because it's so heartfelt. I believe the story she tells is an important one, in this day and age. (If you don't want to read, scroll down to see more photos of P-22. The facial portrait is from 2018, the final few from 2014; the others, I don't know—but wasn't he glorious?)
I write this eulogy while looking across one of the ten-lane freeways P-22 somehow miraculously crossed in 2012, gazing at a view of his new home, Griffith Park. Burbank Peak and the other hills that mark the terminus of the Santa Monica Mountains emerge from this urban island like sentinels making a last stand against the second largest city in the country. The traffic noise never ceases. Helicopters fly overhead. The lights of the city give the sky no peace.
Yet a mountain lion lived here, right here in Los Angeles.
I can’t finish this sentence without crying because of the past tense. It’s hard to imagine I will be writing about P-22 in the past tense now.
Biologists and veterinarians with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced today they have made the difficult decision to end P-22’s suffering and help him transition peacefully to the next place. I hope his future is filled with endless forests without a car or road in sight and where deer are plentiful, and I hope he finally finds the mate that his island existence denied him his entire life. I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to say goodbye to P-22. Although I have advocated for his protection for a decade, we had never met before. I sat near him, looking into his eyes for a few minutes, and told him he was a good boy. I told him how much I loved him. How much the world loved him. And I told him I was so sorry that we did not make the world a safer place for him. I apologized that despite all I and others who cared for him did, we failed him.
I don’t have any illusion that my presence or words comforted him. And I left with a great sadness I will carry for the rest of my days. Before I said goodbye, I sat in a conference room with team members from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the team of doctors at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. They showed me a video of P-22’s CT scan, images of the results, and my despair grew as they outlined the list of serious health issues they had uncovered from all their testing: stage two kidney failure, a weight of 90 pounds!!! (he normally weighs about 125), head and eye trauma, a hernia causing abdominal organs to fill his chest cavity, an extensive case of demodex gatoi (a parasitic skin infection likely transmitted from domestic cats), heart disease, and more. The most severe injuries resulted from him being hit by a car last week, and I thought of how terrible it was that this cat, who had managed to evade cars for a decade, in his weakened and desperate condition could not avoid the vehicle strike that sealed his fate.
As the agency folks and veterinarians relayed these sobering facts, tissue boxes were passed around the table and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. This team cares just as much for this cat as we all do. They did everything they could for P-22 and deserve our gratitude.
Although I wished so desperately he could be returned to the wild, or live out his days in a sanctuary, the decision to euthanize our beloved P-22 is the right one. With these health issues, there could be no peaceful retirement, only some managed care existence where we prolonged his suffering—not for his benefit, but for ours.
Those of us who have pets know how it feels when we receive news from the veterinarian that we don’t want to hear. As a lifelong dog and cat owner, I have been in this dreadful position too many times. The decision to let them go is never easy, but we as humans have the ability, the responsibility, and the selflessness to show mercy to end the suffering for these beloved family members, a compassionate choice we scarcely have for ourselves.
I look at Griffith Park through the window again and feel the loss so deeply. Whenever I hiked to the Hollywood sign, or strolled down a street in Beachwood Canyon to pick up a sandwich at The Oaks, or walked to my car after a concert at the Greek Theater, the wondrous knowledge that I could encounter P-22 always propelled me into a joyous kind of awe. And I am not alone—his legion of fans hoped for a sight of Hollywood’s most beloved celebrity, the Brad Pitt of the cougar world, on their walks or on their Ring cams, and when he made an appearance, the videos usually went viral. In perhaps the most Hollywood of P-22’s moments, human celebrity Alan Ruck, star of Succession, once reported seeing P-22 from his deck, and shouting at him like a devoted fan would.
We will all be grappling with the loss of P-22 for some time, trying to make sense of a Los Angeles without this magnificent wild creature. I loved P-22 and hold a deep respect for his intrepid spirit, charm, and just plain chutzpah. We may never see another mountain lion stroll down Sunset Boulevard or surprise customers outside the Los Feliz Trader Joe’s. But perhaps that doesn’t matter—what matters is P-22 showed us it’s possible.
He changed us. He changed the way we look at LA. And his influencer status extended around the world, as he inspired millions of people to see wildlife as their neighbors. He made us more human, made us connect more to that wild place in ourselves. We are part of nature and he reminded us of that. Even in the city that gave us Carmeggedon, where we thought wildness had been banished a long time ago, P-22 reminded us it's still there. His legacy to us, and to his kind will never fade. He ensured a future for the entire population of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains by inspiring us to build the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, which broke ground this spring.
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| An artist's visualization of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, the world's largest (discussed in this article) |
P-22 never fully got to be a mountain lion. His whole life, he suffered the consequences of trying to survive in unconnected space, right to the end when being hit by a car led to his tragic end. He showed people around the world that we need to ensure our roads, highways, and communities are better and safer when people and wildlife can freely travel to find food, shelter, and families. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing would not have been possible without P-22, but the most fitting memorial to P-22 will be how we carry his story forward in the work ahead. One crossing is not enough—we must build more, and we must continue to invest in proactive efforts to protect and conserve wildlife and the habitats they depend on—even in urban areas.
P-22’s journey to and life in Griffith Park was a miracle. It’s my hope that future mountain lions will be able to walk in steps of P-22 without risking their lives on California’s highways and streets. We owe it to P-22 to build more crossings and connect the habitats where we live now.
Thank you for the gift of knowing you, P-22. I’ll miss you forever. But I will never stop working to honor your legacy, and although we failed you, we can at least partly atone by making the world safer for your kind.
He was a beautiful creature.
Rest in Peace, P-22. You captured so many hearts, just trying to live your life.
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A couple more links a couple of days later: an elegy written by David Ulin (one of my MFA instructors), which appeared 12/19 in the Los Angeles Times; and an All Things Considered conversation with photographer Steve Winter, who propelled P-22 to fame with a 2013 article in Nat Geo and that Hollywood sign shot. Finally, here is a story about that propulsion to fame.
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