One Cougar’s Legacy in the Heart of Hollywood

Los Angeles is well known for its celebrities, so when the fearless cougar P-22 gained fame for making his home in the midst of the city, he inspired an effort to build the world's largest wildlife crossing and helped spark a national campaign to support crossings and corridors everywhere.

When he came of age, P-22, like other young male mountain lions, set off to find territory and potential mates. Against all odds, he successfully traversed multiple freeways to find a new home in Griffith Park. However, this small scrap of land, the terminus of the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounded by major freeways on three sides, isolated him. He somehow survived in the smallest home range ever recorded for a male mountain lion-just eight square miles, where a more typical range would be 100-150 square miles.

After years of research and outreach by the National Park Service biologists and other primary partners-Caltrans, the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy, and the National Wildlife Federation's California regional executive director, Beth Pratt, this team of conservationists pinpointed the vital location for a wildlife crossing to be built to restitch an entire ecosystem. Now a decade later, P-22's story continues to inspire the very construction of this landmark crossing and expands what's possible for urban wildlife coexistence.

PBS Nature's Wild Hope has told stories about wildlife crossings and corridors worldwide, but this is the first the series has featured in North America-and it's the largest, of course, given that the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, once build, will be the largest wildlife crossing of its kind on the planet.

View the full episode, and see for yourself.