The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: cecil the lion
Ethical Hunters Shocked By Cecil Story

Ethical Hunters Shocked By Cecil Story

BOZEMAN, Montana — That picture of Cecil the lion’s corpse and the American dentist posing triumphantly over it was ghastly. Cecil had apparently been lured out of a safe haven in Zimbabwe and illegally shot.

It happens that the Cecil story appalled many of the hunting and fishing writers gathered here by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The partnership represents sportsmen dedicated to maintaining wildlife habitats.

Its members often see themselves squeezed between other environmental groups hostile to hunting and the “slob hunters” they believe sully the sport. And they feel underappreciated as protectors of the wild environment. Hikers and campers pay far less for conservation than they do.

“Cecil was an absolute disaster on multiple fronts,” Don Thomas, a well-known outdoor writer and co-editor of Traditional Bowhunter magazine, told me. From what is known, Thomas places most guilt on the dentist’s hunting guides. It is their responsibility to know the laws and see that hunters abide by them.

“The hunter’s errors seem to be more a matter of sleaze factor than of illegality,” Thomas added, though he is not cleared of the latter.

But Thomas also has a problem with the Disney-fication of Cecil — “taking a wild lion, giving it a name and turning it into a faux pet as a tourist attraction.” The biggest threat to African lions, he explained, is not hunters but the loss of wild habitat through human overpopulation, development, and climate change.

What is ethical hunting?

It’s not killing an animal who has no legitimate means of escape. It’s not taking an animal who has been around people a lot and has lost its instinctual fear of humans. Collared and long studied by biologists, Cecil would seem to fit into that second category.

Ethical hunters have long condemned “trophy mania,” that is, measuring the experience merely by the size of the antlers harvested.

The general public, meanwhile, does not grasp how much conservation is paid for by hunters and anglers. Hunting and fishing license and permit fees largely go toward habitat restoration.

The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937 taxes the sale of hunting gear. The proceeds, more than $12 billion so far, go to state wildlife agencies for conservation. A similar tax on fishing equipment followed the 1937 law. Buy a fishing rod and you pay the excise tax. Buy a sleeping bag and you don’t.

In 1900, fewer than 500,000 white-tailed deer remained in North America. Extensive deforestation, poaching, and over-harvesting had decimated the population of deer, as well as of turkeys and ducks. Now there are 30 million white-tailed deer.

Better habitat care and hunting practices deserve the credit, Brian Murphy, a wildlife biologist who heads the Quality Deer Management Association, told me.

The complaints nowadays are of too many deer — and with reason. “Too many deer imperil the health of the forest, removing forage that other species rely on,” he said.

Many hunters and anglers feel right at home in the locavore movement, which promotes food grown locally. They say their relationship with the hunted dinner is far more intimate than with a plastic-wrapped chopped meat shipped from wherever.

When his family says grace over a meal, it thanks the animal itself, Murphy said. “I’ve never felt that way over a Big Mac.”

Furthermore, the game animal on the dinner table had probably enjoyed a far fuller life in the wilds than the penned cow turned into hamburger. These hunters have a point.

The Cecil story should have little to do with them.

Photo: Kevin Chang via Flickr

Zimbabwe Calls For Extradition Of Cecil The Lion’s Killer

Zimbabwe Calls For Extradition Of Cecil The Lion’s Killer

By MacDonald Dzirutwe

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) — The American dentist who killed Cecil the lion was a “foreign poacher” who paid for an illegal hunt and he should be extradited to Zimbabwe to face justice, environment minister Oppah Muchinguri said on Friday.

In Harare’s first official comments since Cecil’s killing grabbed world headlines this week, Muchinguri said the Prosecutor General had already started the process to have 55-year-old Walter Palmer extradited from the United States.

Muchinguri, a senior member of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party, described Cecil — a black-maned lion well-known to foreign tourists in the Hwange National Park — as an “iconic attraction.”

“The illegal killing was deliberate,” she told a news conference. “We are appealing to the responsible authorities for his extradition to Zimbabwe so that he can be held accountable for his illegal actions.”

Palmer has admitted killing the 13-year-old predator, who was fitted with a GPS collar as part of an Oxford University study, but said in a statement he had hired professional guides and believed all the necessary hunting permits were in order.

He has not been sighted since his identity was revealed this week by Zimbabwean conservationists.

Muchinguri also said Palmer’s use of a bow and arrow to kill the lion, who is said to have been lured out of the national park with bait before being shot, was in contravention of Zimbabwean hunting regulations.

Palmer, a life-long big game hunter, returned to the United States before the authorities were aware of the controversy.

“It was too late to apprehend the foreign poacher because he had already absconded to his country of origin,” Muchinguri said.

Social media in the United States and Europe have exploded in outrage and vitriol against Palmer, and the White House said on Thursday it would review a public petition of more than 100,000 signatures to have him extradited.

Under a 1998 treaty between the two countries — which have not enjoyed cordial relations in the latter stages of Mugabe’s 36 years in charge — a person can be extradited if they are accused of an offense that carries more than a year in prison.

In Zimbabwe, the illegal killing of a lion is punishable by a mandatory fine of $20,000 and up to 10 years in prison.

LEGAL, POLITICAL HURDLES

Lawyer Alec Muchadehama said no American had been extradited to Zimbabwe since the treaty was signed, adding that Harare would face legal and political hurdles with Palmer.

First, it has to apply to U.S. courts and satisfy them Palmer committed an offense and that he would be jailed for more than a year if convicted. Courts in Zimbabwe consider a fine first for lion poachers before imposing a jail term, he said.

“They (U.S. courts) may actually doubt the competence of the judiciary here to try him in an objective manner particularly given these prejudicial pronouncements that the politicians are already making,” said Muchadehama.

As with many African countries, Zimbabwe issues annual hunting permits for big game such as elephant, buffalo and lion, arguing that the revenues generated can be used for wider wildlife conservation.

Last year, the southern African nation which is still recovering from billion-percent hyperinflation a decade ago, earned $45 million from hunting, Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority head Edison Chadziya told reporters.

Zimbabwe had an estimated 2,000 lions on private and government-owned reserves and issued hunting quotas of 50-70 lions every year, he added.

However, permitted trophy hunting is far from universal in Africa, and the government in neighboring Botswana — where it is illegal — said the Cecil case showed the risks.

“It is our stern belief that safari hunting of threatened species such as lions has the potential to undermine our regional anti-poaching efforts as it encourages illegal trade which in turn promotes poaching,” it said in a statement.

The shooting is also being investigated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to see if it was part of a conspiracy to violate U.S. laws against illegal wildlife trading, a source close to the case told Reuters on Thursday.

Despite the global media coverage of Cecil’s killing, the big cat’s untimely demise has gone largely unnoticed in Zimbabwe, where average annual income is just over $1,000 and unemployment is higher than 80 percent.

(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Ed Cropley and Giles Elgood)

Photo: Piper Hoppe, 10, from Minnetonka, Minnesota, holds a sign at the doorway of River Bluff Dental clinic in protest against the killing of a famous lion in Zimbabwe, in Bloomington, Minnesota July 29, 2015. (REUTERS/Eric Miller)

Late Night Roundup: Jon Stewart’s ‘Secret’ Meetings

Late Night Roundup: Jon Stewart’s ‘Secret’ Meetings

Jon Stewart had some fun mocking the news coverage of his “secret” meetings with President Obama — though in fact, the two meetings were both on the White House visitor logs: “Something is not a ‘secret’ just because you don’t know about it.”

The Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper also interviewed an Arkansas pastor, who insisted that the local LGBT rights ordinance is actively discriminating against him. (Spoiler: It isn’t.)

Larry Wilmore highlighted the American hunter who killed Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, by American dentist and hunter Walter Palmer.

And The Nightly Show contributors Mike Yard and Holly Walker both shared their ideas for responding to the problem of big game hunters. Yard offered some interesting ideas on how to solve the fact that hunters have too much time and money — while Walker herself has become a “big game hunter-hunter.” As she explained: “It’s not personal — it’s for sport.”

Jimmy Kimmel highlighted the story that Donald Trump gold a breastfeeding lawyer she was “disgusting.”

Honoring Cecil

Honoring Cecil

Whew. Boy, are we an angry country.

Seldom do I avoid the company of my fellow animal lovers. But this week, I want to put a continent of distance between me and those calling for the demise of the Minnesota dentist who killed a 13-year-old lion in Zimbabwe now known round the world as Cecil — beloved to citizens and the tourists who flocked to see him.

The dentist paid $50,000 to hire two hunters, who strapped an animal carcass onto their vehicle to lure Cecil out of his home in Hwange National Park, where it was illegal to hunt him. Then the dentist shot him with a bow and arrow. The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force told CNN that Cecil suffered a slow death, surviving with his wound for 40 hours before the trio tracked him down and killed him with a gun.

Cecil was later skinned. He was also decapitated. Many of us would call this beheading an act of barbarism. Men such as that dentist call it a trophy.

“I’m honestly curious to know why a human being would feel compelled to do that,” late-show host Jimmy Kimmel said in an emotional monologue Tuesday night. “How is that fun? Is it that difficult for you to get an erection that you need to kill things that are stronger than you?”

You’ve no doubt noticed that I haven’t named this dentist. I want nothing to do with that witch hunt. Google “Cecil and dentist” and you’ll find his name easily enough, along with all the online threats and calls for his death that have sent the dentist into hiding.

Some of these threats may be coming from your Facebook friends, the same ones who like to post little hearts under pictures of puppies. After the first angry post I saw calling for revenge and listing the dentist’s name and phone number, I gasped. By the tenth one, I shut down Facebook and went for a walk.

Most people are good — I believe that — but there have been moments since the news broke of Cecil’s death this week when I have felt that our numbers are in steep decline.

Time magazine reported this gem of a statement from PETA president Ingrid Newkirk: “If, as has been reported, this dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property, because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, and, preferably, hanged.”

Hanged.

A high road with gallows — this is news to me.

The dentist is hardly the only American who fancies himself a modern-day Crazy Horse — who, by the way, would never have killed an animal for sport. In Smithsonian magazine’s June issue, Susan Orlean profiles “Lion Whisperer” Kevin Richardson, who has an extraordinary relationship with a pride of lions in South Africa.

She writes about the popularity of Cub World, where tourists can cuddle with lion cubs up to 6 months old, and then describes what happens to some of the cubs after they become adults:

The rest of the extra lions end up as trophies in commercial hunts, in which they are held in a fenced area so they have no chance to escape; sometimes they are sedated so that they are easier targets. These “canned” hunts charge up to $40,000 to “hunt” a male lion, and around $8,000 for a female. The practice is big business in South Africa, where it brings in nearly a hundred million dollars a year. Up to 1,000 lions are killed in canned hunts in South Africa annually. The hunters come from all over the world, but most are from the United States.

I’m not going to be one of those people whose eyes bug out as they yell: “Where was your outrage then?” This time, we can name both the hunter and the hunted, with enough gruesome details about Cecil’s death to give us chest pains. This time, it feels so real.

I’m also not going to demand to know why we aren’t worried about everything bad happening to people everywhere. We care about many things, every day.

I do appreciate this tweet from writer Roxane Gay, who is black: “I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so if I get shot, people will care.”

Speaking of tweets — the ridiculous kind, of which there are so many — Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio chirped this: “Look at all this outrage over a dead lion, but where is all the outrage over the planned parenthood dead babies.”

Well, yes, we could play that game and join Rubio in making a mockery of the truth, but let’s leave such foolishness to this guy who thinks tweeting a non sequitur proves he should be leader of the Free World.

Yes, we are outraged over the killing of the lion named Cecil, whose only crime was to attract a wealthy human in search of his manhood.

How do we honor this majestic creature?

Here’s an address for you: http://www.wildcru.org. It’s for the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.

They want to save lions like Cecil.

How about you?

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including …and His Lovely Wife, which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Screengrab: Paula French via YouTube