Steve Winter’s photo captures the B-22 in its approved urban habitat
It was nighttime in Los Angeles and artist Cori Mattie was having a glass or two of wine when she heard something outside her house.
At first she thought her brother’s Labrador Retriever had left the house, so she went to get him.
But it wasn’t the dog.” It was a mountain lion [كلمة بذيئة]says Matthias.
And not just any mountain lion, but the most famous mountain lion in Hollywood and maybe even the world.
His name was B-22, Mattie said, and her meeting with him in March was an indelible mark.
His green eyes shone directly at her. She stared back at him. She took a short video before hiding inside and the B-22 remained until dawn, when it silently took off over a lattice fence.
“It could have destroyed me, but it didn’t. It escalated quickly and became my spirit animal. I went from zero to a hundred, very quickly,” she said.
Mattie wasn’t the first to be fascinated by Angelino B-22: The city has been under his control since 2012, when he somehow managed to cross two deadly highways and establish himself in Griffith Park, a 4,200-acre mountain in the heart of one of the largest concrete forests in the world.
image copyright Corie Matthias
Cori Mattei, an artist also known as the LA Hope Dealer, poses in front of a mural she painted in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles featuring B-22s.
His charisma and strange choice of urban habitat have made him a local folk hero ever since. His plight—being trapped on an urban island with no chance of finding a mate—also made him the face of a movement to protect endangered species.
This week, the hearts of B-22 fans broke when the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that, due to the lion’s increasingly erratic behavior as it reaches old age, it now faces two potentially bleak futures. : be transferred or be deleted. I will definitely not be returning to Griffith Park.
But come what may, his ten-year reign has cemented his status as a shining star in Hollywood like any star on the silver screen.
Griffith Park is small compared to the typical average mountain lion size of 150 square miles. However, like many city dwellers, the B-22 was willing to sacrifice space for a prime location.
It was first discovered in February 2012, when Miguel Urdinana, a park biologist, was reviewing nighttime footage from his wildlife camera traps.
“Suddenly this huge lion’s butt appears on my computer screen!” remember Ordinana.
She didn’t believe it at first, but a later photo confirmed that the park had an exciting new resident.
image copyright National Park Service
And the big cat captured the imagination of famed wildlife photographer Steve Winter, who set up a camera trap under the Hollywood sign. He waited over a year before getting the B-22 into the camera frame.
The photo went viral on National Geographic, which led to the birth of a star.
“It gave people hope, because they live in this big metropolitan area and they have this park that they walk through that was actually wild with mountain lions,” Winter said. “He became a celebrity in Celebrity City,” she added.
Since then, a decade of adventures with the B-22 have followed. He scared off a maintenance worker in 2015 when he hid in the maintenance space under a house in Los Feliz. From time to time he is seen in front of the gates and cameras in the garden, imposing, even gentle, as he feeds on a deer he has just slaughtered. The city loved him so much that he forgave him when he (probably) killed a koala in a Los Angeles park. Los Angeles declared October 22 “B-22 Day”.
But it has also become a symbol of a darker reality for California’s mountain lions.
Local prey – wolves, raccoons and other small animals – were also infested with rat poison, which is now ubiquitous in Los Angeles.
In 2014, B-22 camera traps spotted him looking sick, and officials took him in for treatment.
A photo of him looking old and confused soon went viral, but it was no joke. He was found filled with rat poison and consumed with scabies, a condition that kills most mountain lions.
image copyright National Park Service
In 2014, a B-22 suffered from scabies (pictured left).
The habitats of animal species have been choked off California’s highways. Although up to 6 thousand mountain lions live in California.
Researchers believe the population of the Santa Monica Mountains, where the B-22 likely originated, could become extinct within 50 years as cats resort to inbreeding, weakening their gene pool.
Large chunks of asphalt also make travel to new habitats deadly. In September, a pregnant mountain lioness was mauled and killed as she tried to cross the Malibu Highway that bisects a key area of habitat. She and her four unborn puppies had traces of rat poison in their bodies.
Once, Ordinana captured video of B-22 making plaintive mating calls.
The freeways and development surrounding Griffith Park ensured that it was isolated from potential females and would never reproduce.
The reign of the Lion King is over
Being among the humans who love him leads to his downfall. At the advanced age of 12, he started spending more time acting wild in the urban areas around the park. A Chihuahua, one of Los Angeles’ least endangered but highly protected species, was recently killed. The final straw came after he attacked a resident who was walking his dog.
When officials cornered him in a yard Dec. 12, the B-22 was underweight, full of scabies and suffering from an eye injury possibly caused by an automobile accident, said Jeff Sikich of the National Park Service, a scientist. time with anyone else’s B-22.
It was revealed at a press conference the following day that it was unlikely he would ever be released into the wild again.
As tragic as it may have been, his fans say moving him out of Griffith Park and placing him in a shrine would be the best-case scenario, and his legacy as an Los Angeles legend is safe.
“He managed to survive here against all odds.” said Mattie, who painted a large mural of him and is involved in wildlife conservation campaigns. Emphasizing that “a lot of people can relate to him. It’s not easy, Los Angeles will chew you up and spit you out.” But, for now, it still exists.
