Hollywood got a new mural earlier this month. A striking image of P-22, the mountain lion that made its home in Griffith Park, now gazes out on the boulevard. P-22 captured the public’s attention by migrating from the western Santa Monica Mountains to Griffith Park, which involved crossing both the 405 and the 101 Freeways. Angelenos mourned the mountain lion’s death in December 2022.
I knew there had been a number of tributes to P-22, but I didn’t realize how many murals he was featured in. There are at least six. Three were painted by muralist Jonathan Martinez. Multi-disciplinary street artist Corie Mattie has also painted three, of which the one on Hollywood Blvd. is the most recent.
It’s great that people remember P-22, but it would be even better if people started thinking about ways to keep these beautiful animals alive. One of the reasons P-22 caught the public’s attention was that he managed to cross two freeways without getting hit. Many mountain lions die from vehicle collisions every year. A 2024 study from the UC Davis Road Ecology Center reports that 613 mountain lions were killed on roads between 2016 and 2023, inclusive. That averages out to about 76 per year…