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P-22 has been euthanized
- recursive__ 4y ago
- smohare 4y agoSo “has died” is such a diversion. He was killed.
- dang 4y agoSubmitted title said "has died". I've replaced it with "put to sleep" for now, which at least makes clear that he didn't just "die". Although it's a euphemism (an appalling one really), it at least conveys the context, which is that wildlife professionals did it, and say it was for reasons of humaneness. Edit: switched to the less euphemistic wording suggested by notduncansmith below
- jacquesm 4y agoTechnically though he was already on the way out due to rat poison which is a lot closer to being killed.
- notduncansmith 4y agoI think HN can handle “was euthanized” but yeah it’s a tough situation to do justice to. I lived right by Griffith Park from a few years ago up until very recently, and this was deeply sad news.
- jacquesm 4y agoI'm trying to imagine what it would be like to round a corner and be eye-to-eye with that beauty. Mixed fear and awe.
- samtho 4y agoMountain lions are not as much of an apex predator as their namesake seems to suggest. Attacks on humans are exceedingly rare especially considering how many of them live in close proximity to humans. You won’t see them during the day (and if you, get far away from it) but you may see them at night, usually on trail cameras. If you are walking around mountain lion country at night, you are very likely being watched closely. I try not to think about it when I’m up at my cabin. Unless they are literally starving, they are usually very timid and shy. Humans are especially terrifying to wildlife. We walk very tall, make a bunch of strange noises, we have tools, lights, automobiles, and otherwise signal that we are the apex predator.
- jacquesm 4y agoI've lived in the Canadian bush and have been up close with deer, elk, moose, bobcats and bears. Of all those the moose are easily the most impressive and depending on the season can be quite dangerous, bears are obviously not the best to come across either. All of that multiplied by 10 if they have young. But I've never seen a big cat the size of a mountain lion in the wild and even though they may be shy I'm not sure if the lizard part of my brain would be sufficiently convinced of that.
- dang 4y agoThat's a better word. I've put it in the title above.
- zx8080 4y agoFrom [0]: > The National Park service confirmed that P-22 was responsible for killing a chihuahua that was being walked in the Hollywood hills last month. No queationing humaneness aspect of putting to sleep, however was the decision connected to the attack? From what I've read: - P-22 was tracked and captured 5 days ago after confirming attacking a chihuahua in the Hollywood last month. - 5 days later P-22 was put to sleep Would P-22 be put to sleep if there was no recent attack on chihuahua? Does the obvious connection mean that the reason for putting to sleep was not "humaneness", but risk of attack on pets? 0 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63957074 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63957074
- jjtheblunt 4y agoP-22 had multiple skull fractures and ruptured internal organs from an automobile collision, whose driver reported the accident, days earlier. I read that earlier today...which is of course terribly sad.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- joshuahaglund 4y agoConsidering he was down to 90 lbs from 123 in 2012, had a cracked skull and herniated diaphragm from an apparent recent car crash, I'd say he was euthanized
- bmitc 4y ago> "I told him I was so sorry that we did not make the world a safer place for him," said Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation, who was present for P-22's final moments. > The great slashes of asphalt also make journeys to new homes potentially deadly. In September, a pregnant mountain lion was struck and killed when she tried to cross a Malibu highway, which bisects a key swathe of habitat. She and her four unborn cubs all had traces of rat poison in their systems. > Once, Mr Ordeñana captured a video of P-22 making plaintive mating calls. They would never be answered; the freeways and development surrounding Griffith Park guaranteed he was walled off from any potential females and would never reproduce. That all hits hard. I feel like a raging narcissist every time I'm on a road and especially on highways. On highways, it's especially clear to me as they often separate more natural landscapes (mainly because people want trees to stave off some sound from the highway). But driving down them, and especially when seeing animals on the highway dead or alive, I'm just filled with sadness that we take away wildlife's freedom and mobility. Imagine some other being just straight up divided a city, a state, or a country, forever cutting you off from family, friends, recreation, food (that your life depends on), etc. unless you are able to pass through a gauntlet of high-speed machines that confuse and blind you and scale walls and valleys.
- themaninthedark 4y agoGreen bridges are a thing that could exist. I remember reading about them some time ago, thinking about how they could help prevent deer strikes on the roads where I live. https://www.thelocal.de/20130918/51975/ https://www.thelocal.de/20130918/51975/ https://germanyinusa.com/2021/05/13/green-bridges-help-animals-safely-cross-the-german-autobahn/ https://germanyinusa.com/2021/05/13/green-bridges-help-anima...
- DoreenMichele 4y agoHabitat destruction and breaking up habitat into excessively small, unconnected spaces is a big issue: The specie's habitats have been choked off by California's freeways. Though as many as 6,000 mountain lions live in California, researchers believe the population in the Santa Monica Mountains... could die out in 50 years... The great slashes of asphalt also make journeys to new homes potentially deadly. In September, a pregnant mountain lion was struck and killed when she tried to cross a Malibu highway, which bisects a key swathe of habitat. She and her four unborn cubs all had traces of rat poison in their systems.
- nkantar 4y agoIn this city full of transients, P-22 was a true Angeleno. Sleep well, big kitty, and thank you for everything you’ve done for local wildlife awareness.
- akiselev 4y agoPlease write to your Congress people in support of wildlife crossings [1]! Here in California especially, much of our infrastructure is aging and needs to be rebuilt in the coming decade. This is the perfect time to get wildlife crossings into the political zeitgeist so that every large highway and road infrastructure project sets aside funds to build either cut and cover wildlife crossings [2] or raised crossing [3]. Out here in East County San Diego we've got much more open space for our mountain lion population but they often face the same difficulty safely crossing the I8. Thankfully, even though they eat lots of farm animals every year (one mountain lion ate my neighbor's goat last year!), everyone tries really hard to scare them away without harming them (and especially avoid poisoning them) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_crossing [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/WildlifeCrossingA1IsraelSept202022_01.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Wildlife... [3] https://discoverapega.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Photo-courtesy-of-Joel-Sartore-purchased-from-NatGeo_679002-feature.jpg https://discoverapega.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Photo-co...
- jonathonlui 4y agoThere's a ~$90 million wildlife crossing that started construction earlier this year in Agoura Hills, CA [1] where apparently many mountain lions try to cross. It wouldn't have helped P22 since there's many roads and freeways in the 30 miles between Griffith Park, where P22 lived, and Agoura Hills but there's some progress in helping mountain lions in the area. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Annenberg_Wildlife_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Annenberg_Wildlife_Cros...
- rqtwteye 4y agoI feel this is suffering from the typical US problem that public infrastructure does either not get built at all or in a super expensive way. There must be ways to build these crossings way cheaper than 90 million and place them in more locations. They only have to hold animals that at best weight a few hundred pounds.
- 4y ago
- ohyoutravel 4y agoThis story gives me a great sadness in my bones, hard to describe, can’t believe what we’re doing to our environment.
- s5300 4y agoP-22 is thought to be the only mountain lion to have ever tasted a Koala. P-22 jumped a pretty high fence at a LA zoo & left with an entire koala in its mouth. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-cougar-koala-20160311-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-cougar-koala-... The zoo spokesperson did not blame the mountain lion for doing predatory mountain lion things.
- kelnos 4y agoWith the exception of a new-account troll, it's really heartening to see all the positive comments here. I clicked through expecting that, but also expecting to read a bit less compassion, and a bit more "these are human spaces" type comments. Nudges my faith-in-humanity meter up a little bit to see advocacy around wildlife crossings and just making human spaces respect wildlife more.
- bagels 4y agoWhy is rat poison legal in California? It kills wild birds, mountain lions, domesticated cats, and isn't very effective at controlling rats.
- bamboozled 4y ago
- pvaldes 4y agoSomebody is earning money selling it. Californian condor was almost extinct by poison and rescued at the last second, but we don't learn anything valuable it seems.
- dumbotron 4y agoCrazy that there was a 99 Percent Invisible episode about him just a few weeks ago. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/cougar-town/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/cougar-town/
- groffee 4y agoCree Indians: "When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money." Humans are just a cancer on this planet.
- beebeepka 4y agoMore than a decade ago there was a video report on tv where a young adult cow was euthanized on the grounds that it is illegal to keep unlicensed "livestock" or something to that effect. The family had rescued and taken care of this creature and the government just killed it for no other reason but following protocol. I honestly believe we are the worst. Not sure if it's cultural thing or most of us are plain evil
- live9news 4y agoIf you’re a cancer, why are you still alive? Call me “a troll” - but in all honesty what is even the point of such a comment? We could just as well call state land management of wild lands to blame here. Not dissimilar, we have state mismanagement allowing for dead wood build up and wildfires rip through to devastating effect. In my own state and town, we have nuisance flooding. We always (for some value of always) have. Coincidentally, these flood-prone areas are all fill-in of low-land salt marshes that were the run-off areas for the rain water. We’ve covered every bit of land with development and surprisingly, it is now “climate change” to blame and not piss poor management of land.
- jfk13 4y ago> it is now “climate change” to blame and not piss poor management of land Have you considered that both might be important factors?
- JaggerFoo 4y agoOk, so P-22 was isolated in the Griffith Park area, and in 2014 they captured him for treatment for health issues. Why not release him in an area where there were other mountain lions, so he can get freaky with a female, and he would not be isolated? Why was returning him to an area where he will continue to be isolated in a relatively small area, with contaminated prey and no chance of mating, the best choice for the animal?
- joshuahaglund 4y agoI'm not an expert but I've read that relocating them is hard because they're so territorial and there's not like an abundance of wilderness left to put him. He probably would have been killed by a younger mountain lion by now if he was in a more wilderness territory. There was the thought maybe he'd cross back to the Santa Monica mountains, maybe a female would cross over to Griffith park. He wasn't a problem until the very end, then he was caught and found to be in rough shape, probably suffering. FWIW, coyotes kill more pets but are afaik only killed when they get too familiar with humans or are aggressive. https://abc7.com/chihuahua-killed-granada-hills-caught-on-video-coyote-attacks-southern-california/12560988/ https://abc7.com/chihuahua-killed-granada-hills-caught-on-vi...
- firefoxd 4y agoWow, no one believed me when I said I encountered a mountain lion in my hiking trail. I even started to think I had imagined it. I never even heard of p-22. Secretly... I stopped going in this trail.
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoI saw a mountain lion once at the edges of my farm. I was up there rather early..but it was darker than usual. I was going to be hanging around by the outer fence until the sun came out stronger. And suddenly, I was face to face with a mountain lion. I have never seen anything so gorgeous up close and I was terrified. I didn’t know if I should maintain eye contact or back off. I literally couldn’t form a thought at that moment. The eyes were mesmerizing and I wasn’t sure if I couldn’t break off eye contact because he was pinning me down with his eyes. And just like that, he(or she?) abruptly broke the gaze and walked away. To this day, I wonder if it was real. I don’t think I can actually explain how I felt but I can ‘replay’ the feeling when I remember that chilly foggy morning. I have seen wildlife upclose before. My other favourite memory was when I was a young chef and I had a very short stint at a (very famous) restaurant in London near Hyde Park. It was my double shift and I was dead tired that I ran across the empty road to the bus stop. And just like that..a red fox emerged from nowhere..we had a moment and he dashed off. I remember that moment. It brings forth delight in me everytime I think about that early morning hello. I see lynxes and bobcats and coyotes in my outdoor cam all the time. But I still cannot…simply.can.not..articulate that feeling of gazing into that mountain lion’s eyes. What a gorgeous magnificent creature! I wonder what it thought of me and if I made a favourable impression. I would like human beings to share this planet with the others who have the rightful ownership and deserve to thrive.
- mfsch 4y ago99% Invisible did a podcast about P-22 very recently – worth a listen if you want to learn about this story. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/cougar-town/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/cougar-town/
- throwayyy479087 4y agoI hate Californian style development so much it's unreal. The fact that they're STILL building new urban sprawl is disgusting. We will not be forgiven for sacrificing the Earth on an alter of Targets and single family homes
- mindcrime 4y agoI'm very far from the sterotypical "tree hugging hippie eco-terrorist" type, but even I read this, and can't help but feel a certain bit of misanthropy. I mean.. we do kinda suck. That's not to say that I'm advocating for anarcho-primitivism or "returning the planet to the animals" or anything. But it sure seems like we should be able to do better. Ya know? Local prey - coyotes, raccoons, and other small animals - are laced with the rat poison that has become ubiquitous around Los Angeles. In 2014, camera traps spotted P-22 looking ill and officials hauled him in for treatment. A mugshot of P-22 looking grizzled and bemused quickly went viral, but the cause was no joke. He was found to be full of rat poison and consumed by mange - conditions that kill most mountain lions. The great slashes of asphalt also make journeys to new homes potentially deadly. In September, a pregnant mountain lion was struck and killed when she tried to cross a Malibu highway, which bisects a key swathe of habitat. She and her four unborn cubs all had traces of rat poison in their systems. Once, Mr Ordeñana captured a video of P-22 making plaintive mating calls. They would never be answered; the freeways and development surrounding Griffith Park guaranteed he was walled off from any potential females and would never reproduce.
- kodah 4y agoMy takeaway is that: - Some places don't need buildings or roads. The intersection of rich people and wildlife habitats is interesting. - If there must be roads, like highways, we should study ways to get wildlife under or over them. I'm curious what could be done, but just slap this on an ever-growing list in my head of "things that should change in California".
- themaninthedark 4y agoThere is a solution that both I and a sister comment have touched on: Green bridges, otherwise known as wildlife crossings.
- bioemerl 4y agoI agree with the concept of these if nothing else but for the reason that it would reduce deaths due to deer impacts