There are a few things a Los Angeles resident must do to be considered a true Angeleno: survive the traffic on insane city highways 101 and 405, hike through Griffith Park to the Hollywood sign, and all that always seem chilled. In that sense, P-22 is LA through and through, and no one cares that he’s not human, he’s a cougar.
He’s not a corona smuggler, like the dolphins in the Venice Beach canals and the coyotes in the parks south of Los Angeles – symbols of what happens to the world when humans aren’t constantly on the go and takes up a lot of space. P-22, twelve years old, has been around for a long time, a decade to be precise. In 2012, he made his way out of the Santa Monica Mountains, hiked more than 50 miles south, crossed Highways 101 and 405, and settled into Griffith Park. There are a photo of him from 2013, as he wanders under the lighted Hollywood sign. The picture looks like a paparazzi photographed a celebrity. At least since then P-22 is a celebrity.
P-22 sounds like a rapper or athlete’s stage name, but it’s quite simply his identification number that science gave him: “P” stands for Puma, and he was the 22nd of the 100 or so mountain lions who died in 2010 in discovered in the mountains of Santa Monica. When he was caught in Griffith Park two years later, he was wearing a tracking collar; Since then, the movements have been recorded, and since then P-22 has been well known in this city, which stands for the contrast between urban concrete jungle and nature like no other. You can live in downtown Los Angeles and only have to drive 60 minutes (if there is no traffic jam) and there you are: ocean, mountains, desert, forests.
Sometimes he visits the actors in their gardens
Known for the Hollywood sign and the observatory with its science exhibits and planetarium, Griffith Park is huge at 21 square kilometers but relatively small for a wildcat’s territory – a puma’s home range is typically 375 square kilometers . There were therefore initial fears that P-22 could get in the way of people; but that didn’t happen. There are always video recordings of him, most recently in January on the security camera of actress Leilani Fideler. “He jumped over the fence into the garden, which was pretty wild,” she said. Otherwise, P-22 is as chilled as the Angelenos – live and let live.
Despite the tracking collar, it’s difficult to pinpoint his exact whereabouts. “Most of the time we don’t know where it is,” says Seth Riley of the National Park Service. “Just because a lot of people have photos of it now doesn’t mean it’s around houses more often. It means that people have more cameras.” Of course, it’s also typical LA that they accept such an animal, otherwise P-22 would have been declared a problem puma and caught or maybe even killed.
But in LA, a celebrity gets special rights. When P-22 ate an animal that had previously been poisoned with rodenticide and became ill as a result, there was public furor – the poison has been banned since October 2020. When he broke into the Los Angeles Zoo and allegedly ate a koala bear there – it’s not certain if it really was P-22 – the zoo’s rules were changed: the animals must now stay inside at night.
The largest wildlife bridge in the world
There’s just one small problem for P-22: he’s a beautiful animal, has no male competition – and yet he’s not lucky in love, which is why they call him “Brad Pitt of the Cougars” in Los Angeles. He’s the only puma in the area. “It’s not a problem at all that he’s here; he should just be able to go somewhere else or have visitors,” says Riley. That’s what they’re working on right now in LA: They’ve just broken ground on an $87 million project, a Bridge for animals over the 101 freewaythe largest in the world.
Seen from above, this bridge in Liberty Canyon will look like nature is reclaiming a little bit of space from humans because it will not be paved, but overgrown with grass. Animals like lizards, possums and lynxes should be able to walk over them into Griffith Park – and possibly a partner for P-22 too. So that Brad Pitt Puma can finally be happy.