Big cat accused of eating zoo’s koala
WASHINGTON • The situation did not look good. Inside the Los Angeles Zoo, a koala enclosure was missing one member — an elderly female named Killarney. Outside, mutilated marsupial parts lay in a bloody heap.
Surveillance footage showed black and white images of the likely killer near the scene of the crime: the seven-year-old sandy-haired mountain lion P-22.
The evidence was circumstantial — no one saw P-22 attack the koala. But it would have been enough to convict Los Angeles’s most famous feline resident, and the sentence for koala- cide can be severe.
Luckily for P- 22 and his fans, the zoo has declared it will not seek the death penalty despite weeks of debate over whether the mountain lion known for prowling majestically past the Hollywood sign should be allowed to roam free.
“It is the zoo’s hope that P- 22 remains in Griffith Park,” spokeswoman April Spurlock said. “This is a natural park and home to many species of wildlife. We will continue to adapt to P-22 as he has adapted to us.”
The zoo is at the edge of P-22’s home range in the rugged, 1,600- hectare expanse of L. A.’s Griffith Park. While koalas aren’t exactly natural mountain lion prey, an older, feeble marsupial makes for appealing cat food.
“The attack on the koala, although sad, is normal predatory behaviour — essentially a lion being a lion and eating,” Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for California Fish and Wildlife, said.
Since mountain lions are a protected species, no one can kill one without a “depredation permit,” and those are issued only in extraordinary cases. But the March 3 attack on Killarney was such a case. All the evidence seemed to line up against P-22. There was the fact that only a powerful predator could have jumped the three-metre wall. There were the pings from P-22’s GPS tracker, which put him in the vicinity of the zoo on the night in question.
Los Angeles Coun. Mitch O’Farrell, who chairs the committee that oversees the zoo, suggested maybe it was time to kick P-22 out of the city. “Regardless of what predator killed the koala, this tragedy just emphasizes the need to contemplate relocating P-22 to a safer, more remote wild area where he has adequate space to roam without the possibility of human interaction,” he said.
Jumping to P-22’s defence were Coun. David Ryu and Beth Pratt- Bergstrom, the California director for the National Wildlife Federation.
“That we have a mountain lion living in the secondlargest city in the country is something to celebrate,” Pratt- Bergstrom said. “For wildlife to have a future in this world where they are running out of room, coexistence is essential.”
In the end, zoo officials decided they couldn’t blame P-22 for being what it is. But the koalas have been taken off public display and the zoo’s small, vulnerable creatures will now be locked in indoor enclosures at night.