HC

(she/her) Beach hair, don't care...actually, I care a lot.

[PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes]

Flashback: Former National Weather Service directors warned Trump’s cuts “could lead to needless loss of life”

[Eric Michael Garcia @EricMGarcia]

Padilla getting cuffed is the second biggest post on the Andor Subreddit. https://t.co/tJXE7gUQ1i

[HC @CA_HP_]

@MLSist What a wonderful way to spend a few hours! Thank you for having compassion and taking this on!

[GO GREEN @ECOWARRIORSS]

Total insanity as Trees are needed more than ever to fight #climate change
Feds move to expand logging in Pacific Northwest and
could open as many as 2.6 million additional acres to the timber industry, with 64 Democrats voting for it.

https://t.co/u0DUoxU3JU

[Beth Pratt @bethpratt]

Elections have consequences. Wildlife will die. Species will go extinct. Nixon passed the ESA. But today the right has lost any sense of morality around the protection of wildlife/wild lands. I am devastated--and pissed off.

https://t.co/eDhUYjxwNn

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is threatening to unseat elected officials if they do not follow his orders to shut down the government during the holidays.

Are we still a democracy or have we already moved to oligarchy and authoritarianism?

[HC @CA_HP_]

@NiallHarbison Thank God you found them and took them in!

[Beth Pratt @bethpratt]

How do you say goodbye to a mountain lion? A tribute to P-22

On December 17, 2022, the world said goodbye to one of the most beloved and celebrated animals in history—the mountain lion known as P-22, who had lived for a decade in a most unlikely place for a wild creature: Los Angeles. As remarked Steve Winter, the National Geographic photographer who captured the now well-known photograph of the cat roaming under the Hollywood sign, “The LA Times called him the most famous animal since Lassie—but there were nine Lassies, and only one P-22.” P-22’s life and influence transformed how people all over the world regard living with wildlife.

The day before the world learned of his death, I said my own intimate farewell to this remarkable animal. But how do you say goodbye to a mountain lion? Although I had advocated for his protection for a decade, we had never met before. That day, I sat near him, looking into his eyes, and told him he was a good boy. I told him how much I loved him. How much the world loved him. And I told him I was so sorry that we did not make the world a safer place for him. I apologized that, despite all I and others who cared for him had done, we had failed him.

P-22 had me at hello. Ever since I’d first read stories about and seen photos of this young male cougar who had appeared in urban Griffith Park in 2012, I’d developed a “conservation crush.” I quickly nicknamed him “the Brad Pitt of the cougar world,” as both are ruggedly handsome and beloved around the globe. But it wasn’t P-22’s dreamy looks alone that captivated me. It was the improbability of his existence—his continued survival in the second largest city in the United States—that elicited equal doses of profound awe and sadness in me. Although we celebrated P-22’s intrepid spirit, charm, and just plain chutzpah (he once strolled nonchalantly down Sunset Boulevard, cruising past trendy bars and taco trucks), he wasn’t exactly living his American dream. Being trapped on an island of wilderness surrounded by roads and development, unable to escape, doomed him to live out his days a lonely bachelor.

After P-22 made his miraculous journey—crossing two of the busiest freeways in the country—to his new home in Griffith Park, he made the urban life work. He coexisted relatively peacefully with the park’s visitors (more than ten million a year), as well as the surrounding residents, and he remained largely unseen, as befitting his species’ nickname, “ghost cat.” His legion of followers, however, always hoped for a sight of him, whether on their walks or on their Ring cams, and whenever he made an appearance, the videos usually went viral. Those lucky enough to have encountered P-22 usually commented with the same excitedly reverent tones a fan would use upon meeting Mr. Pitt. In a classic Hollywood moment, human celebrity Alan Ruck, star of Succession and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, reported once seeing P-22 from his deck and calling out the mountain lion’s name like a movie buff trying to get the attention of a favorite celebrity on the red carpet.

During his life, the plight of this beloved cat was featured in the New Yorker, Men’s Journal, Teen Vogue, 60 Minutes, the Guardian (with my favorite headline, “Can there be a Hollywood ending for the ‘Brad Pitt’ of mountain lions?”), and across many other news outlets around the globe. He racked up over a billion media hits worldwide. P-22 inspired a museum exhibit, a clothing line, multiple murals, and a hip-hop song. The city of Los Angeles declared an official day in his honor, October 22, and in 2023, over fifteen thousand people attended the eighth annual P-22 Day Festival. On P22 Mountain Lion of Hollywood’s Facebook page, which has more than twenty-five thousand followers, you can see photos of him (well, of his likeness in the form of a life-size cardboard cutout) with megastars including James Cameron, Sean Penn, and Shania Twain. P-22 even rated a question on Jeopardy.

Perhaps in true celebrity fashion (see James Dean or Jim Morrison), P-22’s death did nothing to diminish his popularity. His tragic passing—having to be humanely euthanized at approximately age twelve, due to injuries sustained after being hit by a car and other health issues—served to unite people around the globe in a collective mourning. Angelenos, bereft at losing their “king,” erected makeshift memorials in Griffith Park at which adults and children alike left heartfelt messages and flowers. The marquee of the famous Mohawk Bend bar on Sunset Boulevard read “Rest in Puma, P-22,” and the Los Angeles Public Library system issued a limited-edition library card in his honor.

Millions of people posted reactions online, expressing grief and showing compassion for the lonely and heroic cougar who meant so much to so many. Governor Gavin Newsom shared that he “grew up loving these cats”; Hilary Duff commented on Instagram that “P-22 = Icon”; and Rainn Wilson tweeted, “RIP to P-22, a gorgeous LA icon.” Media outlets as diverse as Rolling Stone, CNN, the Economist, NPR, and Buzzfeed featured stories about his passing, and on the day he died, P-22 was trending on Twitter, which I’m guessing is the first time in history that a wild mountain lion has taken over the Internet. His Celebration of Life event at the Greek Theatre (which sold out in two hours and crashed the Ticketmaster website) featured appearances by the DJ and songwriter Diplo, actors Rainn Wilson and Julia Butters, Congressman Adam Schiff (“I had the honor of representing P-22 in Congress”), and more high-profile figures from the community. Offspring of the original members of the band The Tokens, who popularized “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” led the six thousand people in attendance—many sporting “I Heart P-22” shirts—in a stirring rendition of the song.
When I started working on the wildlife crossing project in 2022, even I wouldn’t have envisioned that a mountain lion could have a big enough impact to sell out the Greek Theatre and trend on Twitter. As someone who has dedicated my entire life to protecting wildlife, I see these ripple effects as a further sign of hope for conservation efforts.

In both his life and his death, P-22 used his influencer status for good. He also united us, as his plight became a rallying cry for action. Back in 2012, when he first appeared on the scene, P-22 had not yet become a superstar; his status as a global animal influencer was not yet in full force, and the visionary Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, was still ranked by many as an impossible (and foolhardy) dream. Over time, however, P-22 became the poster cat for that cause, and just eight months before his death, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing broke ground, on April 22, Earth Day, 2022.

This crossing will not only ensure the survival of the mountain lion population in the area but also reconnect an ecosystem for all wildlife and prevent needless deaths on this freeway used by 300,000 to 400,000 cars per day. Not a bad accomplishment for a mountain lion. Yet this is not just an LA story. Or even just a California story. P-22 inspired people worldwide—inspired them to action, which has included building more wildlife crossings in their areas. He helped usher in the “age of wildlife crossings,” galvanizing public support for these projects, including $350 million for their construction in a federal appropriations bill and Senator Alex Padilla introducing bipartisan legislation on connectivity this year.

And of course P-22 also inspired something deeper than this. He compelled people in Los Angeles and beyond to reexamine our preconceptions of wildness and what we might have lost (and almost did) by thinking we needed to banish nature from our cities and other human spaces. Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez wrote a decade ago, when P-22 first made an appearance, “I have no illusions that the Glendale bear or P-22 wouldn’t hesitate to dine on me given the right circumstances. But I’m still rooting for them. Deep down, I’m hoping that if they can survive at the margins of human civilization without forsaking their wildness, so can I.”

People connected to P-22 in profoundly personal and meaningful ways, and his story became a rallying cry. That this holdover from the last ice age could make a home in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, one of the classic representations of our modern age, became a symbol of hope that nature had not yet irrevocably given up on us. People across the globe were saddened that, in the end, he suffered the consequences of trying to survive in unconnected wilderness amidst urban sprawl, but in many cases that sadness has also moved people to ask themselves what they can do to help. The world was showing it wasn’t too cynical or divided to unite around grieving for a mountain lion, and this gave us all some hope for the future of wild things—and for ourselves.

P-22 inspired a new ethic of coexistence, asked us all to reconsider our preexisting notions of the wild world. He encouraged people to look at living with wildlife as neighbors—not as adversaries to fight against, not as potential pets to be domesticated, and not as subordinates to be dominated. As Henry Beston writes in The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, I want people to develop “a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” and to regard them as he did: “They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

P-22 was a wild animal, but he was also a prisoner. We will be grappling with the loss of P-22—and our complicity in it—for some time as we try to make sense of a Los Angeles without this magnificent creature.

We may never see another mountain lion stroll down Sunset Boulevard or surprise customers outside the Silver Lake’s Trader Joe’s. But perhaps that doesn’t matter; what matters is that P-22 showed us it’s possible. Every neighborhood and community needs to find their own P-22. Whether it’s a mountain lion or a monarch butterfly, find the animal that inspires and connects and unites the people around you, not just in love, but in action.

Beth Pratt
adapted from my book, "When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors."

Donate to P-22's legacy at https://t.co/izMiaJhJUi

[HC @CA_HP_]

@anarchoboognish Has anyone found her family? They’re trying to take down funding opportunities for her and Luigi Mangione. But we have to support them.

[David Hogg 🟧 @davidhogg111]

This IS the bad place

[HC @CA_HP_]

I’m just getting caught up on Rings of Power. Every single episode is cinema. It’s crazy this is TV.

[Rings Of Power Era @RingsOfPowerEra]

Season 2 has been described by crew as "a juggernaut."

The scale of the production required using all available stages and workshops at Bovingdon Airfield Studios, three entire film units, and according to one crew member, "the most impressive sets [they had] ever seen."

[HC @CA_HP_]

@bethpratt So exciting!

[HC @CA_HP_]

@DeityShe How exciting and so lovely 💜

[HC @CA_HP_]

@nanditab1 @KamalaHarris Love Penzeys!

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

JD Vance: School shootings are just “a fact of life.”

Kids are being killed and he’s shrugging his shoulders.

Remember that in November.

[HC @CA_HP_]

@NiallHarbison Thank God for your patience, and for everyone’s safety.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

U.S. Olympians are using their trip to the Olympics to get the basic preventative healthcare they can’t afford to get in the U.S.

We should be embarrassed that we’re the only industrialized country without universal healthcare — all because lobbyists pay off our politicians.

[HC @CA_HP_]

@starwars Can’t wait to hear what he says about the second season

[HC @CA_HP_]

@JDVance That’s weird. Didn’t your friend, Sofia Nelson, get a home baked care package from you after they had top surgery?
Give it up, Weirdo. The NYT already outed you as a huge fake.

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

Manipulating a voice in an “ad��� like this one should be illegal.

I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.