Let Us Now Praise Mountain Lions: Revisiting Edward Abbey in the Santa Monica Mountains

Abstract

More than 50 years have passed since Edward Abbey published Desert Solitaire—his persuasive tribute to the preservation of wilderness and wildlife, and over 30 years since he penned. In Praise of Mountain Lions: Original Praises (1984), Abbey predicted how hyper-urbanization and anthropogenic stressors would lead to habitat fragmentation and to an extinction vortex among mountain lion populations. In this essay, I engage in an interdisciplinary approach employing Edward Abbey’s esthetic theory, political ideologies, and polemic land ethic to examine the urgent plight of mountain lions struggling to survive today in the Santa Monica Mountains. It is my hope that the synthesis of Edward Abbey’s political admonitions will contribute to the emerging body of interdisciplinary environmental literary criticism and research to advocate for the protection of mountain lions in urbanized landscapes.