Edited by Rachel Heung
On Tuesday night at the Silver Lake neighbourhood of Los Angeles, a rare celebrity appeared in front of the public eye. P22 is the city’s most famous mountain lion and he was spotted on Berkeley Circle which is around three and a half miles away from his home in Griffith Park. Residents of the neighbourhood shared photos from doorbell cameras and pictures they took in their homes. One of the residents said, “ultimately, it’s pretty awesome. The whole neighbourhood’s excited.”
P22 is hardly spotted outside of Griffith Park so this was shocking news. It’s unclear why P22 left his home but it’s not the first time. In January, he was seen on the deck of a house in Beachwood Canyon and was caught on a video by a camera. In 2015, he actually hid under a house in Los Feliz.
National Park Service published a study in September 2021 about mountain lions. They analyzed data from 29 GPS-collared adult and subadult mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, Santa Susana Mountains, Simi Hills and other nearby areas. They used 128,133 locations to estimate home range size and evaluated how mountain lions used the landscape. Most of the animals avoided human areas or only came close at night. However, there were two exceptions: P41, a male cat in the Verdugo Mountains area, and P22, who has the smallest home range ever recorded for an adult male (only nine square miles surrounded by freeways and residential areas in and around Griffith Park).
This February is the 10th anniversary of P22 walking into Griffith Park as a young mountain lion. He has plenty of food to eat, no male competitors in his territory, but sadly no hope of finding a mate. The California director for the National Wildlife Federation, Beth Pratt says, “a city long bashed for being a concrete jungle full of smog proves the world wrong by making a home for a mountain lion.” She loves the way the city embraces an apex predator. “The LA area possesses a value of coexisting with wildlife that I celebrate. People share their Ring videos of P22 making an appearance in their backyard with excitement, not fear.”
Bibliography
Gammon, K. (2022, March 9). 'Pretty awesome': celebrity mountain lion's walkabout excites
Los Angeles residents. Retrieved March 12, 2022, from
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/09/mountain-lion-los-angeles-
california-p22
Kurland, Z., & LAist Staff. (2022, March 9). We Saw A Mountain Lion Walking In Silver Lake.
The Famous P-22 Takes A Stroll, Then Heads Home To Griffith Park. Retrieved March
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