Comment: Looks like there’s a new mountain lion in Griffith Park. Let’s try not to kill him

There was no doubt about it. The large furry blond animal on a tree trunk lit by the headlights of a car in a parking lot east of Barham Boulevard at the edge of Griffith Park last week was a mountain lion.

Seriously? In Los Angeles, the beloved mountain lion named P-22 had lived for a decade in Griffith Park. But he was an aberration. It was surprising that he got there in the first place most likely by crossing dangerous highways to get to the park, narrow by lion standards, where he easily found prey like deer and just as easily avoided the people who flocked there for recreation.

He was captured and euthanized in late 2022 due to illness and severe injuries.

But here is the video, shot by a resident of the apartment complex next door. It was as if the camera had caught the ghost of LA’s most famous cat.

All I could think was: Don’t move! Stay! Better yet, leave the parking lot! The leading cause of death for urban cougars is being hit by a vehicle. And in the video, he is also seen walking reluctantly on the grassy side of the parking spaces. (A wildlife biologist says the cat in the video is most likely a male, so I’ll go with that.)

It would be safer to let the cat into the trees and grassy area of ​​the park and wait for National Park Service biologists to find it and tranquilize it to take biological samples for genetic testing and put a GPS collar on it. neck, so that we can wander from a distance with him.

And they are clearly interested in adding this cat to the study of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains (including Griffith Park), Simi Hills and the Santa Susana Mountains that the agency has been doing for more than two decades.

Jeff Sikich, a biologist on the study, says the video suggests the cat is a young adult and possibly male, based on the width of the shoulders, musculature and appearance of the genitalia. It’s the first legitimate evidence he’s seen of a mountain lion in Griffith Park since P-22 died.

How did it get there? If it came from the far western mountains, where P-22 is thought to have originated in the Simi Hills, it crossed highways 405 and 101. If it came from the Verdugo Mountains northeast of Griffith Park, it most likely crossed highways 5 and 134 .There are several paths and canals under various highways, and overpasses that he may have found. Regardless, it’s a tough ride, Sikich says of the trip to Griffith Park.

Will he stay? Male mountain lions, territorial and looking for mates, have a large home range, averaging 150 square miles, Sikich says. Collared cat number P-22 was about 2 or 3 years old when Sikich captured him in Griffith Park in 2012. The park is a tiny nine square miles and offered P-22 no mating opportunities. But it was all his.

Car crashes and rat poison are two of the biggest dangers this cat will face no matter where he decides to live in the Los Angeles area. P-22 was probably hit by a car shortly before he was euthanized. And blood tests later showed he had two different rodenticides in his system when he died. Earlier in his life, scientists treated him for scabies, which is generally the result of rat poison.

For years, the state of California has tried to limit the use of various rat poisons that often sicken and kill wildlife and pets that eat the prey that ingest it. Currently, Assembly Bill 2552, the Poison-Free Wildlife Act, would expand the ban on rodenticides. The legislature must approve it.

To make navigating roads and highways less treacherous, we need more crossings. The Annenberg Wildlife Pass over Highway 101 is under construction. And the Safe Roads and Wildlife Protection Act, passed in 2022, requires the California Department of Transportation to build crossings where needed when building new highways and improving existing ones. With less poison out there and more wildlife crossings, maybe this mountain lion will have a better chance.

Sikich would not say when or how he will go looking for the parks’ newest cougar. And hopefully the cat is still there. People are so fascinated by lions that they will follow researchers. I try to stay as elusive as the animals I’m catching, he says, laughing.

If he is collared, he will be 121^str cat to add to the research study. But wouldn’t it be nice to skip that number and go straight to the P-122? Some of the Park Service people, including Sikich, think so.

Why not? It does not overturn the research. It’s just a reminder to all of us that if we want to continue P-22’s legacy, the best way to do it is to make urban California a little less dangerous for its native cats.