Urban Wildlife Week: Celebrating 10 Years of the P-22 Day Festival
October, 25, 2025
On October 25, EDL Lab Manager Sabrina attended the annual P-22 Day Festival at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, the culminating celebration marking the close of LA’s 2025 Urban Wildlife Week. The event marked the 10th anniversary of the community celebration honoring P-22 – the legendary mountain lion whose journey across Los Angeles inspired the #SaveLACougars movement and helped catalyze global attention around urban wildlife connectivity.
Hosted each year by the National Wildlife Federation, the festival brings together community members, public agencies, conservation organizations, educators, and researchers united by a shared commitment to building a future where humans and wildlife can coexist and thrive.
One of the highlights of the day was seeing the inspiring work created by local school students. As a design research lab based at Toronto Metropolitan University, EDL is continually reminded of the importance of engaging and inspiring the next generation around ecological planning and design, conservation, and environmental stewardship. Education plays a critical role in shaping future researchers, designers, and conservation leaders who will help create biodiverse, sustainable, and climate-resilient cities.
With music, dancing, student-led educational displays, hands-on planting workshops, and project updates, the festival was a vibrant celebration of community, conservation, and connection. The event also highlighted the ongoing construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing – a landmark infrastructure project that will allow wildlife to safely cross the 101 Freeway and reconnect critical habitats in the Santa Monica Mountains. During the visit, Sabrina also had the opportunity to see the crossing firsthand and drive beneath the structure in Agoura Hills as construction progresses.
EDL has been engaged in the project since its early stages. In 2019, as a partner of ARC Solutions, the lab was invited by Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation to lead a professional CoLab design workshop for what was then known as the Highway 101 Wildlife Crossing Project at Liberty Canyon. The workshop was one of six CoLabs organized as part of the broader Safe Passages research initiative.
Now under construction, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing represents a major milestone for wildlife conservation and ecological infrastructure in North America. EDL is proud to have contributed to the project’s early design conversations and continues to follow its progress as an example of collaborative, interdisciplinary design advancing landscape connectivity.
For more information about the the Liberty Canyon CoLab and the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, is available on the Safe Passages Project page.