Many of us have breathlessly enjoyed the story of elusive puma P-22, who survived countless freeway crossings during his 10 years living at his home in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park (2012-22).
When officials with the California Department Fish and Wildlife felt they had to euthanize the injured big cat, the choice had momentous significance — as it should, since the situation highlights the struggles of an apex species facing our human-made catastrophe called The Anthropocene.
The whole picture of mountain lion survival in urban Southern California can be understood in P-22’s struggle with adjacentcy and the expanding human Anthropocene Age overrunning his habitat.
Whether you call these beautiful creatures tuk’e’m (Chumashan), cougar, puma, wildcat, panther, ghost cat, or catamount, these bounding feline beasts charm the human observer.
Unlike African lions, another feline species that can have 550-pound males, the much more svelte and lithe California lions max out at about 160 pounds. I have encountered three in the wild.
California mountain lion attacks on humans have been exceedingly rare, and we are not part of this apex predator’s usual diet.
The last known cougar attack on a human in our hiking area was in March 1992, when a 9-year-old boy was non-fatally mauled at Gaviota State Park (see 4.1.1.).
California mountain lions have been here for the past 30,000 years, long before the first homo sapiens migrated into North America circa 13,000 years ago.
In the 19th century, the 49ers and Anglo ranchers moved into California after the United States ripped control from Mexico (War of 1848), and they hated these large predators that could easily take down their free-roaming calves.
Such expanding cattle herds formed the basis of the Californios’ livelihoods and grew to enormous size.
Between 1907 and 1963, a U.S. record of 12,462 lions were killed under a California state bounty program (see main photograph from 1928).
At the direction of the state Legislature in 1907, the California Department of Fish and Game offered a $20 bounty per pelt. In 1913, it raised the bounty to $30 (4.1.1.). In selected counties, the bounty was raised to $50 for males and $60 for lionesses.
After those laws were repealed in the 1960s, and after a brief period as a “game animal” in the 1990s, Proposition 117 (which I voted for) passed.
Finally, these fabulous creatures have been legally protected and are termed “a specially protected mammal.” While sport hunting is also outlawed, the tuk’e’m (lions) can still be legally killed by officials if deemed a threat to humans.
We know that the climate changes symbolized by the Anthropocene have eliminated many species and endanger many more (the impending Sixth Extinction).
The survival of the local desert bighorn sheep presents a similar issue, and they have essentially disappeared from all five of our nearby federal wildernesses, although a Partners in Preservation comrade photographed this tagged ram in the Sespe Wilderness in 2020.
While climate changes have driven out the local bighorn sheep, direct human intervention led to the assassination of all of our California grizzly bears, one of which is so ironically heralded on the state flag.
We put the grizzly on the flag as a trophy? By 1920, all of the grizzlies in California had been killed.
Mountain lions continue to flourish in Northern California, and we know that some roam our Santa Barbara backcountry and foothills. Ranchers in Refugio Canyon claim the panthers have killed several sheep in the area.
In Los Angeles, somewhat amazingly there are still about 500 wild lions roaming around the San Gabriel Mountains, encircling the northeastern San Fernando Valley, where I grew up.
L.A., Orange and San Diego counties all share in these stressed feline populations besieged between massive concrete freeway ribbons, encroaching housing tracts, pollution and the New Climatic Regime’s relentless warming (aka the Anthropocene).
I mourn the death of P-22, who heroically survived more than 10 years in an area much smaller than the vast range most cougars have needed to survive and flourish.
When P-22 began to stalk chihuahuas, he was sedated and checked. A car had struck him at some point, and he was badly injured, emaciated and had other physical problems.
There is now a report of a mountain lion roaming in the creek near the Douglas Family Preserve. In order to protect our expanding homo sapiens population, should we kill and skin this one in advance, too?
In a recent article, leading American philosopher Martha Nussbaum astonishingly asserts, “To say that it is the destiny of antelopes to be torn apart by predators is like saying that it is the destiny of women to be raped.”
Hence, for her, the mass killing of grizzly bears — sentient beings — is murder by the homo sapiens species, and thus I carefully wrote “assassinations” above.
However, Nussbaum goes on to contend “that ‘in the wild,’ animals’ desires for peaceful life” usually end in pain and violent death.
How can she determine that the sentient P-22 desired a “peaceful life”? Peaceful in human terms may not be at all like P-22’s concept of “peaceful.”
If P-22 had not been struck by a car crossing the freeway near Griffith Park, he might have declined naturally as an aging cat and eventually just expired out there in his home region, where he belonged, and not being darted, sedated, examined and then euthanized by well-meaning California Fish and Wildlife veterinarians.
As the dominant apex species of the planet, we need discussions and plans on how to deal with our continuing encroachments on animal and plant habitats. Admitting to the Anthropocene and drastically reducing fossil fuel dependence form great starting points.
4.1.1. Lead photo from Dan McCaslin’s “Trails Into Tomorrow” (2021). Desert bighorn sheep photo courtesy of D. Goodner.
There have been 19 recorded lion attacks in California since 1986, three of them fatal; see https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Mountain-Lion/attacks. Remember, there are 37 million humans living in California today. For the bounties on mountain lions: https://mountainlion.org/us/ca/-ca-history. Martha Nussbau, “A Peopled Wilderness,” New York Review of Books, Dec. 8, 2022, pp. 21-23.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
