Mountain lion spotted in L.A.’s Griffith Park, more than 1 year after P-22’s death

Get ready for the sequel.

For 10 years, the mountain lion known as P-22 was the first wild cat to call Los Angeles’ Griffith Park home, becoming a celebrity with a television series, biographies, his own Twitter (now X) handle, street murals and museum exhibits. His story inspired co-existence between modern humans and wild animals.

Now, about 1 1/2 years after his death before Christmas 2022, another mountain lion has arrived in the park, captured on video inside the 4,314-acre urban oasis.

This second, park-loving puma is clearly seen on a video taken on Tuesday, May 14 by a resident, standing on all fours near a parked car and later emerging from a thicket — all within the confines of the city’s largest park and home to the Hollywood Sign, Los Angeles Zoo and a miniature train ride for children.

“Yeah, we are pretty convinced by the video it’s a mountain lion,” said Seth Riley, branch wildlife chief at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area where he has studied mountain lions for 22 years, including P-22. “It is exciting. And it is also very interesting,” added Riley on Monday, May 20, who teaches evolutionary biology and wildlife conservation at UCLA.

Next up, he said, is to turn on remote cameras in the park, dormant since P-22’s demise, and begin pinpointing the cat’s location using the video feed. Once the animal is located, biologists from the National Park Service’s mountain lion project will sedate the animal, draw blood, then place a tracking collar on the big cat to keep track of his whereabouts, what he eats — and even if he’s still in the park.

It’s amazing that a mountain lion, P-22, lived in a city park for a decade after crossing the 405 and 101 freeways on a journey from Topanga State Park in 2012. It would be more amazing that another one also safely crossed the 101 Freeway to reach the park, something Riley and other experts strongly suspect.

“It is most likely a younger male, at least 18 months old,” Riley said. He may have been chased across the freeway by an older male — the males often fight each other, sometimes to the death.

If captured, researchers may use his DNA to trace his heritage back to pumas in the Santa Monica Mountains. The stretch from Camarillo to Griffith Park is home to about 12 to 15 mountain lions, but there could be more that the scientists have not collared, Riley said.

These lions are extremely isolated. Males fight with other males over the females. But those who do mate are producing damaged offspring, the result of inbreeding. Without a better gene pool, they are expected to be extinct in 15 years. Since the study began in 2002, more than 100 have been collared and studied.

To promote safe intermingling, the $92 million Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing stretching across the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills is under construction. Once completed in 2026, it will take animals from the south to the north side of the freeway, even into the Los Padres National Forest, where more healthy breeding is possible. The crossing’s last concrete girder across the freeway was put in place Monday, said Beth Pratt, California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation.

“What’s key is that this mountain lion most likely has crossed the 101 Freeway and no other cat has done that since P-22,” Pratt said on Monday. “A lot of cats get killed trying to make this journey.”

Pratt wants to see more wildlife crossings built over other freeways. She also wants crossings within Griffith Park, so wildlife animals don’t get hit by cars that use the park’s roads as shortcuts.

Though more will be known if and when Riley’s team collars the lion, Pratt has a kind of deja vu feeling about this one.

“I am excited about the news and I am celebrating it. This cat is also an ambassador,” she said. “We don’t really know where it came from. We need to let the scientists do their job.”

Both Pratt and Riley think this wild cat will stay in Griffith Park. P-22 may have liked the fact that there were no other males to fight off, and he had plenty of mule deer for meals. Pratt believes this puma may have been fleeing from a dominant male.

He can stay in the park and hide out, she said. Or risk his life crossing another freeway on his way out. The story is bittersweet — a tale of wildlife meets civilization — but like any Hollywood story still in production, one with many possible endings.

“It shows that L.A. can support wildlife and that is a wonderful thing,” Pratt said.