For months, Los Angeles residents believed the park had been evacuated, with only the memory of P-22, a beloved and celebrity mountain lion who once called the park home, remaining as the city mourned his death.
That was until late one night this month, when another mountain lion emerged, this time bigger, younger and stronger, its apparent successor.
“It's very mystical,” said Vladimir Polmiskov, who shot the footage of the big cat near his apartment, adjacent to Griffith Park, a sprawling urban preserve north of downtown Los Angeles. “They've called P-22 the Brad Pitt of the Hollywood Hills,” Polmiskov said. “This will be the DiCaprio of pumas.”
Polmiskov, 30, said he spotted the “huge cat” around 9pm on May 14 while on his way home from dinner with his wife and two-year-old son.
He said he had just parked his car and was unbuckling his son's seat belt when he noticed the creature standing just a few feet away from the car. He gently placed his son back in his seat, got back in the car and closed the door all the way, with the creature staring right at him. “I was blown away by how big it was,” he said. “This thing is just beautiful.”
“How did this cat manage to cross four huge highways that are busy 24 hours a day without being noticed?” Polmiskov said.
Beth Pratt, California executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, said researchers were shocked to learn so quickly that another mountain lion had seemingly taken up residence in the park.
Mountain lions are solitary animals, and males tend to occupy areas of about 150 square miles each, Pratt said. But as the Los Angeles area becomes more urbanized, mountain lions' habitat is shrinking. “I think this tells us that they don't have any other options,” Pratt said.
Known for lurking under the Hollywood sign (supposedly crossing two major highways to get to it), he was euthanized in December 2022 due to old age and agitation. He was a beloved figure in the city and a symbol of the remarkable symbiosis between the concrete landscape and the wildlife that found a way to live in it. Mountain lions are generally calm, silent and elusive, and rarely attack people, according to the National Park Service.
California officials announced that, inspired in part by P-22, they will build the world's largest wildlife crossing across Highway 101 to reconnect critical habitat in 2021. Officials said this month that the road is on track to be completed by 2026.
Researchers are currently working to capture the unnamed new cat, use DNA testing to determine where it came from and place a tracking device on it. They're also relying on public sightings and video footage. Mountain lions are named by numbers, and researchers have now named up to 120, so Griffith Park's new cat will likely be named P-122.
“If we caught this cat quickly, we would skip over 121” and choose P-122 in honor of P-22, Pratt said of the researcher in charge of capturing the cat. “I think we pretty much convinced him.”
For now, Los Angeles residents are fascinated by the video Polmiskov captured of the nameless cat, which Social media“A new king takes the throne!” One person I have written. Another person said: The news left her “speechless and emotional.”
Pratt said the new mountain lion makes it clear that P-22's legacy will live on. “Not only do we know how to coexist with mountain lions, we want to,” she said, noting that in many other states, big cats in urban parks would likely be exterminated.
“Here, we want the wildlife to be among us, even if there are risks,” she added.
