There was little question about it. The hulking blond furry animal on a tree trunk illuminated by the headlights of a automobile in a parking zone east of Barham Boulevard on the sting of Griffith Park final week was a mountain lion.
Severely? In Los Angeles, the beloved mountain lion named P-22 had lived for a decade in Griffith Park. However he was an aberration. It was astonishing that he acquired there within the first place — almost certainly crossing harmful freeways to get to the park, cramped by lion requirements, the place he simply discovered prey resembling deer and simply as simply averted the individuals who flocked there for recreation.
He was captured and euthanized in late 2022 because of illness and extreme accidents.
However right here was video, shot by a resident of the adjoining residence complicated. It was as if the digital camera had captured the ghost of L.A.’s most well-known cat.
All I might assume was: Don’t transfer! Keep! Higher but, again away from the parking zone! A number one reason behind demise for city pumas is being hit by a automobile. And within the video, he’s additionally seen strolling hesitantly on the grassy aspect of the parking areas. (A wildlife biologist says the cat within the video is almost certainly male, so I’m going with “he.”)
It could be safer for the cat to tuck himself into the bushes and grassy area of the park — and watch for the Nationwide Park Service biologists to search out and tranquilize him to take organic samples for genetics testing and slip a GPS collar onto his neck so we will remotely roam with him.
They usually’re positively eager about including this cat to the examine of mountain lions within the Santa Monica Mountains (together with Griffith Park), Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains that the company has been doing for greater than 20 years.
Jeff Sikich, a biologist on the examine, says the video suggests the cat is a younger grownup and doubtless male primarily based on the broadness of the shoulders, the musculature and a glimpse of genitalia. It’s the first authentic proof he has seen of a mountain lion in Griffith Park since P-22 died.
How did he get there? If he got here from the far western mountains — P-22 is believed to have been born within the Simi Hills — he crossed the 405 and 101 freeways. If he got here from the Verdugo Mountains northeast of Griffith Park, he almost certainly crossed the 5 and 134 freeways. There are some paths and culverts below varied freeways, and overpasses he might need discovered. “Regardless, it’s a troublesome trek,” Sikich says of the journey to Griffith Park.
Will he keep? Male mountain lions, territorial and on the lookout for mates, have big house ranges, averaging 150 sq. miles, says Sikich. The cat who can be collared and numbered P-22 was about 2 or 3 years outdated when Sikich captured him in Griffith Park in 2012. The park is a puny 9 sq. miles and supplied P-22 no mating alternatives. However it was all his.
Car strikes and rat poison are two of the largest risks this cat will face irrespective of the place he decides to reside within the Los Angeles space. P-22 was in all probability hit by a automobile shortly earlier than he was euthanized. And blood checks later confirmed he had two rodenticides in his system when he died. Earlier in his life, scientists handled him for mange, which is usually a results of rat poison.
For years, the state of California has been making an attempt to curtail using varied rat poisons that always sicken and kill wildlife and pets who eat prey which have ingested it. Meeting Invoice 2552, the Poison-Free Wildlife Act, would increase a ban on rodenticides. The Legislature ought to cross it.
To make navigating roads and freeways much less treacherous, we’d like extra crossings. The Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over the 101 Freeway is below building now. And the Secure Roads and Wildlife Safety Act, handed in 2022, requires the California Division of Transportation to assemble crossings the place they’re wanted when it builds new highways and improves present ones. With much less poison on the market and extra wildlife crossings, possibly this mountain lion could have a greater probability.
Sikich received’t say when or how he’ll go on the lookout for the park’s latest puma. And hopefully the cat continues to be there. Persons are so fascinated by the lions that they’ll comply with the researchers. “I attempt to keep as elusive because the animals I’m catching,” he says, chuckling.
If he’s collared, he would be the 121st cat to be added to the analysis examine. However wouldn’t or not it’s cool to skip that quantity and go straight to P-122? A number of the Park Service people, together with Sikich, assume so.
Why not? It doesn’t subvert the analysis. It’s only a little bit of a reminder for all of us that if we wish to proceed the legacy of P-22, one of the best ways to do this is to make city California rather less harmful for its native cats.
