Remembering Cecil

Today, on the anniversary of Cecil’s senseless and brutal killing, we should remember Cecil (a truly majestic African lion, head of his pride in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park) and all other wildlife so ‘harvested’ by other humans amongst us (for fun, trophies and lest we forget, the deceitful cloak of the trophy hunters’ excuse,  some twisted notion of “conservation”).

This time last year, American dentist, Walter Palmer of Minnesota, chose to spend his time and money torturing and mercilessly killing Cecil whist on an illegal trophy hunting ‘adventure.’ Theo Bronkhorst (who arranged the illegal hunt), seems to have escaped any subsequent prosecution virtually unpunished.

Cecil was lured from the Hwange National Park by Bronkhorst (illegally) laying down the scent of a dead animal to lead Cecil to the bait. When Cecil appeared, Walter Palmer shot (poorly) the lion with a high powered bow. Wounded and bleeding from Palmer’s arrow, Cecil endured a further 40 hours of agony and despair before finally being ‘dispatched’ by a rifle shot by the brave ‘hunting party.’

Figure 1 – Walter Palmer (left) poses with the corpse of Cecil the lion after hunting him with his bow, wounding the leader of the pride, and shooting him 40 hours later. Photo: Courtesy of The Age

Some want to try and dress this human activity up as “sport,” (‘entertainment,’ ‘fun’) and even “conservation” we should all be grateful for.  None of these ‘virtues’ are obvious to anyone but the minority of deluded perpetrators.

The widespread backlash and outcry since Cecil’s sad demise (may he RIP) has been loud, relentless and will endure until the abomination and embarrassment to humanity that is ‘Trophy Hunting’ is rightly eradicated as a shameful relic of man’s past, deluded wrongdoing.