The city of Los Angeles will memorialize its most famous mountain lion with a bronze sculpture at Griffith Park, the 4,200-acre (1,700-hectare) stretch of land the cougar once roamed.
Known as “P-22”, the number assigned by the team of biologists that first identified him, the lion gained national fame after photographer Steve Winter captured an iconic image of him prowling through Griffith Park with the Hollywood sign in the background.
The sculpture, by Los Angeles artist Adam Matano, will be installed at the park’s visitor center, according to the National Wildlife Federation, which championed the project through its Safe LA Cougars campaign.
Matano’s interest in how wild animals navigate the encroachment of our growing cities dates back to his teen years, he said. He grew up in Rhode Island, surrounded by empty lots. But by the time he reached his teen years, they had been developed into homes.
“I love my favorite hiking spots,” Matano said. “But I kept thinking, ‘what happens to the animals?’”
His sculpture shows a muscular P-22 stepping down from one podium to a second, more freeform and rocky pedestal. The rear podium contains a series of panels depicting local wildlife navigating the city environment – a mule deer crouching through a broken fence, a coyote ambling along against a backdrop of downtown LA, a raccoon and a gray fox in front of the Atwater bridge and the 5 freeway.
“It’s about how you can’t contain nature,” Matano said. “Most people would think it woud be impossible for a mountain lion to live inside the city. But P-22 showed it is possible to co-exist. We should include nature when we design our cities.”
He made a point of portraying P-22 with the GPS radio collar that enabled biologists to study him. “I think the radio collar is kind of misunderstood,” Matano said, noting that geolocation has become one of the most important tools available for understanding how wildlife moves across the landscape, offering insight into how to stitch portions of the fragmented natural world back together.
“If we don’t want to see the collars, then we need to do better with our wildlife,” Matano said. “It’s really important that we understand where these animals are going and how they’re living.”
Matano tried to capture the “idea of the wild entering Los Angeles and awakening the city to the nature already within it”, he said in a statement. He aimed to transform P-22 “into a king not because he dominated the territory but rather because he lived according to his own nature and captured the heart of a city”.
The project was paid for with private philanthropy.
The GPS-collared lion attracted a devoted following in Los Angeles, where his moves often became the subject of local news coverage.
Likely born in the Santa Monica mountains, P-22 had to cross about 10 lanes of traffic on LA’s famously gridlocked freeways to make his home in Griffith Park.
That feat became a driving force behind the Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing, which is slated to open in December. It will become the world’s largest wildlife crossing, and promises to improve genetic diversity in the Santa Monica mountains, where cougars show signs of inbreeding.
Wildlife officials euthanized P-22 in December of 2022, after he attacked a leashed dog and began showing signs of declining health, likely precipitated by a vehicle strike. They estimated his age at 12 years old.
