Wildlife Program at State Park Tonight

Envy, an 80-pound mountain lion cub, has weathered her fair share of heartache in her short life.

First, she was confiscated from her owner’s Elysian Heights home last year for lack of proper wildlife permits. She spent a brief spell in an animal shelter before she was adopted by Mollie Hogan, a keeper at the Los Angeles Zoo who had started a nonprofit center to care for wild animals.

And then there was Levon.

Envy and Levon, a hybrid wolf who was also confiscated from the same owner, had been raised together and did not take kindly to their separation.

“When I saw the wolf’s heart was broken without the mountain lion, I had to take the wolf too,” said Hogan, who reunited the pair last December at her Nature of Wildworks center in Topanga.

These days, life is smoother for the 17-month-old Envy, who cannot be released into the wild because she was declawed as a cub. The young mountain lion has become something of a “goodwill ambassador,” visiting schoolchildren and other groups as part of Wildworks’ education program, Hogan said.

But Levon, in the meantime, was recently returned to his owner, who had secured the proper permit to reclaim him.

Tonight, Envy and a bevy of other wild animals will appear at 7:30 at the Campfire Center at Malibu Creek State Park. The park’s entrance is at 1925 Las Virgenes Road. The Wildworks program, which will also feature a red-tailed hawk, two owls and an opossum, is sponsored by the Santa Monica Mountains Natural History Assn.