P-22, Elusive Mountain Lion Who Became an L.A. Fixture, Is Captured - The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — The upland lion had agelong roamed Los Angeles similar an elusive celebrity. Sometimes, helium was captured successful the grainy footage of a location doorbell; astatine different times, residents claimed to person travel face-to-face with his soulful gaze.

But successful caller weeks, the beast had seemed agitated. He prowled farther from his location scope successful Griffith Park into the surrounding quality territory. He attacked a vicinity dog. Then, helium snatched and killed a Chihuahua.

On Monday, wildlife authorities captured Los Angeles’s infamous puma, different known arsenic P-22, successful a resident’s yard, they said, conscionable days after announcing that they were looking for him. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the antisocial behaviour of the “remarkably aged cat” (P-22 is thought to beryllium astir 12) was a worrying motion of distress — 1 they mightiness person expected fixed that helium lived alone, truthful acold from different upland lions and wildlife.

“This is an unprecedented concern successful which a upland lion has continued to past successful specified an municipality setting,” the section said past week. “As P-22 has aged, however, the challenges associated with surviving connected an land of situation look to beryllium increasing.”

P-22 has agelong been portion of the communicative of Los Angeles. About a decennary ago, a National Geographic photograph captured him lurking astatine nighttime beneath the Hollywood sign. But wildlife officials said helium had astir apt lived successful the tremendous municipal park, astir 7 miles northbound of downtown Los Angeles, for respective years prior.

P-22 (the P is for puma, the 22nd successful a survey to get a tracking collar) was astir apt calved successful 2010 connected the occidental broadside of the Santa Monica Mountains, wildlife officials said, and crossed 2 large Los Angeles freeways to get there.

The feline — solitary, mysterious and seemingly astatine likelihood with the sprawling, often-apocalyptic metropolis — has captured the imaginativeness of its residents, arsenic good arsenic the federation astatine large: According to The New Yorker, helium is the city’s “loneliest lion.” The Guardian dubbed him “the Brad Pitt of upland lions.”

Sarah Picchi, a nonmigratory of Los Feliz, said wildlife officials had knocked connected her doorway sometime aft 10 a.m. and informed her: “There’s a lion successful your yard.”

Having intimately followed the travails of the personage feline, Ms. Picchi said she instantly knew whom the officials were talking about. “Everybody successful my vicinity has been watching the sightings,” she said. “People are acrophobic astir P-22.”

Ms. Picchi said that aft bringing her canine inside, she and her hubby had watched done the model arsenic officials tranquilized the puma and wrapped him mildly successful a tarp.

The big, beloved cat, she added, had captured not conscionable the attraction of her neighborhood, but thing indispensable astir the metropolis of Los Angeles, astir its quality arsenic a spot wherever the chaotic integrates with the urban, and wherever the immense abstraction tin oftentimes marque adjacent the astir connected of humans consciousness lonely.

“They consciousness a batch of empathy for him due to the fact that he’s benignant of connected his own,” Ms. Picchi said of the city’s residents, adding that she and others had go enthralled with P-22’s story: Where was helium going? What was his beingness like? “There’s this chaotic animal,” she added, “that is benignant of an Angeleno himself. ”

Wildlife officials accidental that veterinarians and biologists are present moving unneurotic “to find the astir humane enactment available” for P-22. But galore residents, including Ms. Picchi, person expressed interest astir the beast’s fate.

Beth Pratt, the California enforcement manager for the National Wildlife Federation, said that figuring retired what comes adjacent for P-22 could beryllium challenging, fixed the territorial quality of antheral upland lions. After years roaming solitary successful the wild, helium mightiness besides find modulation to a sanctuary challenging, she said.

“I’m gladsome he’s present nether harmless keeping,” Ms. Pratt said. “He’s nether bully care, and we’re going to find retired what’s going on.”

Ms. Pratt added that she cried upon proceeding astir his capture. But she explained, “I deliberation they were chiefly tears of relief.”

April Rubin contributed reporting, and Jack Begg contributed research.