Replay: Interview with Beth Pratt in Memory of P-22

BeProvided Conservation Radio

This is a replay of my live Facebook interview with Beth Pratt, CA Regional Executive Director of the Wildlife Federation, author, co-creator of Save LA Cougars and the all around cougar lady. The interview originally aired in 2020 during lockdown from the pandemic and I was experimenting with new audio equipment and FaceBook live.

As many of you may know, the world lost a great soul on December 17, 2022. The world famous mountain lion, P-22, had to be compassionately euthanized.

This is a summary in a written Eulogy for P22 by Beth Pratt of what the poor boy was suffering from :

“Before I said goodbye, I sat in a conference room with team members from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the team of doctors at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The showed me a video of P-22’s CT scan, images of the results, and my despair grew as they outlined the list of serious health issues they had uncovered from all their testing: stage two kidney failure, a weight of 90 pounds!!! (he normally weighs about 125), head and eye trauma, a hernia causing abdominal organs to fill his chest cavity, an extensive case of demodex gatoi (a parasitic skin infection likely transmitted from domestic cats), heart disease, and more. The most severe injuries resulted from him being hit by a car last week, and I thought of how terrible it was that this cat, who had managed to evade cars for a decade, in his weakened and desperate condition could not avoid the vehicle strike that sealed his fate.”

I dedicate this replay to Beth and P-22 as well as all of the other people and organizations that have helped with bringing the vision of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing to reality. Here is a link to the wildlife crossing website https://101wildlifecrossing.org/ and to Save LA Cougars https://savelacougars.org/ that has live coverage of the construction.

Here is the link to the moving eulogy for P-22 written by Beth Pratt. (have a tissue ready!) https://www.nwf.org/Latest-News/Press-Releases/2022/12-17-22-Eulogy-P-22