{"id":1771,"date":"2017-02-08T16:55:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T00:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2022-07-30T17:49:01","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T00:49:01","slug":"a-week-in-the-life-of-p%e2%80%9122-the-big-cat-who-shares-griffith-park-with-millions-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2017\/02\/08\/a-week-in-the-life-of-p%e2%80%9122-the-big-cat-who-shares-griffith-park-with-millions-of-people\/","title":{"rendered":"A week in the life of P\u201122, the big cat who shares Griffith Park with millions of people"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mountain lion shows the promise, peril of coexistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article: The Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he lion slinks through the chaparral, a blur of movement in the night. Head held lower than his shoulders, he scours the brush in a ravine just south of\u00a0Travel Town in Griffith Park.<\/p>\n

Hind paws land where the forepaws lift. No twig snaps, no crinkling leaf. He\u2019s silent, an ambush predator, always hunting, always looking for opportunity.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside a small gray box on his neck, a microprocessor switches on to calculate and time stamp his location \u2014\u00a0\u00a021:00, Dec. 2, 2016 \u2014\u00a0one of 56 readings made in the course of a week.\u00a0The coordinates reveal the lion\u2019s rambling course through this island of wilderness in the midst of the city.<\/p>\n

As famous as he is, the mountain lion\u00a0known as P-22 is a mystery, his day-to-day life hidden by his instincts for evasion.<\/p>\n

The National Wildlife Federation has called the\u00a0species a \u201cnearly perfect predator,\u201d\u00a0and among the survival skills, fine-tuned over 40\u00a0million years of evolution,\u00a0is a talent for invisibility.<\/p>\n

What evolution did not prepare P-22 for is how to exist\u00a0in an eight-square-mile urban park with more than 5 million human visitors a year. Most male cats have almost 20 times that space, nearly to themselves.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On this night, his ears twitch to a distant rustling, another creature\u2019s lapse of caution. It comes from a steep\u00a0gully, overgrown by willows.<\/p>\n

P-22 turns his head in advance of\u00a0the\u00a0quick and deadly attack to come.<\/p>\n

A<\/span> few days before, in November, another lion had the same intention when he\u00a0broke into the unsecured pens of two ranches in the Santa Monica Mountains, killing nearly a dozen alpacas and a goat.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0state wasted no time issuing a permit to kill P-45<\/a>, and advocates rushed to champion the rights of the condemned cat. \u00a0At a public meeting a few days later, the crowd grew contentious.<\/p>\n

When a man asked whether P-45 might be deviant or rogue for having killed so many animals in one night, the crowd booed and jeered.<\/p>\n

When a woman proclaimed, \u201cWe are here because these animals cannot speak for themselves,\u201d most in the group applauded.<\/p>\n

An online petition \u2014\u00a0\u201cStop the permit to kill!\u201d \u2014\u00a0drew more than 1,000 signatures from supporters as far away as Moscow and Cape Town. \u00a0The big cat was granted a reprieve.<\/p>\n

The decision reflected the opinion of the biologist who matter-of-factly explained:\u00a0\u201cP-45 is a lion being a lion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mountain lion\u2019s offense would have met with less sympathy back when the cats ranged throughout Rancho Los Feliz and Elysian Park. It would have been seen as an opportunity for sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere may be an element of excitement in stalking royal Bengal tigers in their native jungles, or pursuing the ivory tusked elephant in the sacred preserves of the Ahkood of Swat, but for exhilarating sport, lightly spiced with danger and possessing some other merits of consideration, hunting mountain lions within the city limits of Los Angeles stands preeminent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times\u2019 account of the 1892 hunt continued with descriptions\u00a0of the deep-voiced bay of the hounds, the cries and tootings from the tally-ho horn, the gunshots.<\/p>\n

Mercy, let alone adulation, was not likely back then.<\/p>\n

From the moment P-22 was discovered, he was a celebrity. His image soon adorned the cover of National Geographic. Writers opened at least six Twitter accounts in his name, feeding him lines with late-night flair: \u201cI like free range organic kale-fed deer.\u201d \u201cBuilding a wall along our border with Burbank to keep out golden retrievers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city honored him with a day of recognition (Oct. 22), and filmmakers are about to debut a documentary about his life with the grandiose title, \u201cThe Cat That Changed America.\u201d<\/p>\n

His residency, however, has not been without mishap.<\/p>\n

He has ingested rat poison from eating smaller prey\u00a0and\u00a0contracted a bad case of mange.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Scientists recaptured P-22 in late March and, after noticing crusting on his fur and skin, treated him for mange.<\/p><\/div>\n

He wandered into the crawl space of a home in Los Feliz and endured a day-long assault by authorities who peppered him with bean bags and tennis balls.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Months after turning up looking sickly and suffering from mange, Griffith Park’s resident mountain lion and unofficial mascot, P-22, is looking much healthier.<\/p><\/div>\n

Then there was the incident a year ago with Killarney, the 14-year-old koala, who went missing from her enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo. GPS data and a surveillance video put P-22 at the scene<\/a>, and most assume the koala became a meal.<\/p>\n

Like the best L.A. stories, his debut was captured on a camera. A team of researchers had been studying the movement of wildlife in and out of Griffith Park, seeing plenty of deer, bobcats and coyotes. Then came the surprise.<\/p>\n

Eyes fluorescing from the flash, P-22 is frozen in time \u2014\u00a0Feb. 12, 2012, 9:15 p.m. \u2014\u00a0on a game trail above the Ford Amphitheatre, gaze turned to the left, scouring the brush.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

P-22, the mountain lion in Griffith Park, is photographed using a remote camera in February 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n

Four weeks later, the young cat lay anesthetized in the pre-dawn darkness above Lake Hollywood. His captor, National Park Service wildlife biologist Jeff Sikich, put him at 120 pounds, nearly 6\u00bd feet from nose to tail.<\/p>\n

Sikich drew blood, tagged his ears, placed a GPS collar around his neck and let him go.<\/p>\n

The collar calculates P-22\u2019s location eight times a day when the receiver kicks in for up to 180 seconds and picks up the signals from orbiting satellites. They relay his location to one of 24 ground stations around the world.<\/p>\n

A computer in Berlin, owned by Vectronic Aerospace, stores the information, which Sikich accesses from his office in Thousand Oaks.<\/p>\n

P-22\u2019s whereabouts arrive as numbered coordinates corresponding to locations in the park. The time stamp allows Sikich to trace his daily meanderings.<\/p>\n

On this chill December\u00a0night,\u00a0P-22 continues to follow\u00a0the rustling in the willows. The faint and primordial sound stands out from the city\u2019s white noise.<\/p>\n

Zoo Drive and\u00a0the 134 Freeway are just a drainage away. Cars and trucks thrum the concrete and asphalt. Horns honk. Sirens bleat.<\/p>\n

With ghost-like\u00a0stealth, P-22 moves within striking distance.
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nThis aptitude for ambush explains why the debate and fear over big cats are\u00a0so raw.<\/p>\n

The first recorded mountain lion attack on a human in California occurred near San Jose on July 6, 1909, when a big cat mauled Isola Kennedy, the daughter of a temperance worker, despite her attempts to fend off the attack with a hatpin.<\/p>\n

She and a young companion died of injuries and infection.<\/p>\n

In 1986, a lion attacked two young children in Orange County. Severely injured, they survived, but it was the first of nearly a dozen more attacks in the state.<\/p>\n

With each assault came the question of whether these perfect predators and humans could co-exist.\u00a0Yet many biologists feel that the success of P-22 in Griffith Park \u2014\u00a0and of other lions living in close proximity to other urban areas throughout the West \u2014\u00a0proves that we can.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

This National Park Service photograph shows P-22. The mountain lion is believed to have come from the Santa Monica Mountains, which would mean he crossed both the 405 and the 101 freeways to get to Griffith Park.<\/p><\/div>\n

Gullies and thickets conceal his circuit, a routine no different than any other male lion\u2019s: sleeping by day and, by night, hunting, warding off rivals, looking for a mate.<\/p>\n

Days earlier, he wandered along the western border.\u00a0The lights of Universal City and Warner Brothers reflected in his eyes. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Dropping into Coyote Canyon, he skirted Hollywood Knolls, its homes looking out toward the eastern sweep of the Valley. He heard dogs barking and cars and motorcycles accelerating on Barham Boulevard and the 101.<\/p>\n

L<\/span>ater\u00a0he wandered among the dead at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a celebrity among celebrities. Deer and other prey are drawn to the flowers left in the cemetery\u00a0and to the willows and sycamores covering\u00a0Sennett Creek, and the lion has killed there before.<\/p>\n

That night, though, he crossed\u00a0through Mount Sinai Memorial Park and out toward Oak Canyon. With his long hind legs and powerful haunches, he can leap as high as 15 feet and as far as 40 feet, so few fences or walls are an impediment. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In the morning, he settled himself in the brush, not far from the terraces and plantings of Amir Dialameh, the Iranian emigre who restored this fire-ravaged portion of the park.<\/p>\n

How P-22 got into Griffith\u00a0Park is anyone\u2019s guess. Researchers believe he was born in the Santa Monica Mountains. His father was P-1, and by the age of 2, he had a choice: Stay and fight for this territory or find new ground for himself.<\/p>\n

Some have him bounding across the 405, but he might have found a tunnel and sidestepped the freeway construction after Carmageddon in 2011. Then came the walled estates, the canyon parks and Mulholland Highway before he discovered the Lakeridge or possibly the Pilgrimage bridge across the Hollywood Freeway.<\/p>\n

Once in the park, he found enough deer and smaller prey to sustain him.<\/p>\n

He has tried to catch the attention of female mountain lions with scratchings in the dirt, raked piles of leaves marked by urine, feces, secretions, and with an occasional purr and chirp.\u00a0But there has only been silence in return, not the coupling that researchers describe almost lyrically,\u00a0when a male and female lion\u2019s\u00a0GPS coordinates nearly\u00a0merge and stay together for a week or so.<\/p>\n

Biologists are surprised that P-22 has remained as long as he has in Griffith Park and have concluded that the cat recognizes the risk of leaving.\u00a0Still\u00a0it is possible that one day his instinctual drive to mate will lead him out of the park.<\/p>\n

The isolation and the wanderlust of Southern California\u2019s mountain lions do not bode well for the species.<\/p>\n

\u201cPumas in areas like the Santa Monicas, the Santa Anas and especially the postage stamp of Griffith Park, are betting against the house,\u201d says UC Davis biologist Walter Boyce. \u201cIn the long run, the house always wins.\u201d<\/p>\n

O<\/span>rion\u2019s belt, three pricks of light not quite lost in the city\u2019s luminous glow, clears the ridgeline to the east.<\/p>\n

P-22 strikes. Flexor muscles extend inch-long claws into the soft tissue of a raccoon.<\/p>\n

He bites into the back of the mammal\u2019s neck, severing the spinal cord with a jaw strength that few other creatures can match. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

With the limp body hanging from his mouth, he disappears into the brush, where he licks the fur off its\u00a0skin, tears the flesh and gnashes through bone with his sharp teeth. He prefers the muscles, the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver \u2014\u00a0tissue and organs most rich in blood and fat \u2014\u00a0to the stomach and intestines.<\/p>\n

He takes his time with the quarry, burying it and wandering off, then returning to eat.<\/p>\n

By the time he is finished, there\u2019s little left other than a mound of hair, a paw and the small Halloween mask of its face, remnants that Sikich and his colleague, Seth Riley, discover when they trace the lion\u2019s route a week later.<\/p>\n

While biologists marvel at P-22\u2019s ability to adapt, they want to make it easier for other mountain lions. They hope that one day a wildlife bridge will span the 101 at Liberty Canyon, so that lions and other species can wander\u00a0between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills and the Santa Susana Mountains. The goal is to connect these smaller enclaves with the Los Padres National Forest where there is greater genetic\u00a0diversity.<\/p>\n

There is an urgency to this hope.<\/p>\n

On the second day after\u00a0 P-22\u2019s raccoon kill, a lion labeled\u00a0P-39 tried to run north across the 118 Freeway<\/a> near Chatsworth. A vehicle hit\u00a0her. The impact knocked\u00a0her collar off, and her body was recovered by Caltrans.<\/p>\n

Within six weeks, two of her three blue-eyed cubs had also been struck down on that freeway.<\/p>\n

A<\/span>t 01:00, Dec. 5, P-22\u2019s\u00a0collar switches on. He is south of Mt. Lee, heading toward Beachwood Drive.<\/p>\n

To the west is the Hollywood sign, to the east the Observatory, and to the south, haze smudges the city streets and distant skyscrapers.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Wildlife ecologist Seth Riley, right, and Jeff Sikich, a biologist for the National Park Service, walk through a tunnel used by P-22 as the mountain lion makes his way around the north end of Griffith Park and neighboring properties. The pair use maps and data from a radio collar worn by P-22 to observe his travels.<\/p><\/div>\n

He cuts southwest to Lake Hollywood and makes his way through a break in the 10-foot tall fence, reaching the secluded watershed. Pines, deodars, toyon and laurel provide cover as he waits for deer to wander close. <\/i><\/p>\n

He\u2019s completed a seven-day circumnavigation of the park.<\/p>\n

Ingenuity in the name of survival isn\u2019t unique to P-22, but he is the luckiest.<\/p>\n

Since 2002 when National Park Service biologists started studying mountain lions in Southern California, eight have been killed by other mountain lions, six have been killed by cars or trucks, three have died of anticoagulant poisoning and three cubs have died of starvation and abandonment.<\/p>\n

One cat, P-15,\u00a0was found with his head and paws cut off. A promised reward never flushed out the hunters.<\/p>\n

As for P-22, he is getting old, almost 7.\u00a0Mountain lions seldom live longer than 10 years in the wild. His collar has a mortality sensor that alerts Sikich and Riley if he has not moved in 12 hours.<\/p>\n

So far, the absence of that signal reassures them that the city still has room for the big cat to roam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mountain lion shows the promise, peril of coexistance Source of this article: The Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2017 The lion slinks through the chaparral, a blur of movement in the night. Head held lower than his shoulders, he scours the brush in a ravine just south of\u00a0Travel Town in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,32,40,12,27,19,44,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-nps","category-history","category-los-angeles","category-mountain-lions","category-santa-monica-mountains","category-simi-valley","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3485,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/3485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}