Last month, Walter Palmer, an American dentist, visited Zimbabwe because he wanted to hunt a lion. The animal he set his sights on was Cecil. Unfortunately for him, Cecil belonged to the protected Hwange National Park. This park is a free-roam zone, making it illegal to hunt any animal within it. So what Palmer did was this: with the help of two local people - a farmer, Honest Trymore Ndlovu, and a hunter, Theo Bronkhorst - he fastened an animal carcass to a car stationed outside the park in the hope of drawing Cecil out. Once Cecil ventured outside the park, Palmer wounded him with an arrow. He then stalked the injured cat for 40 hours, shot him dead with a rifle, and then decapitated and skinned him.
Unsurprisingly, people around the world are livid. Much of the outrage stems from shock at the depth of Palmer's cruelty, as well as the underhanded manner in which he circumvented the law in Zimbabwe. But another reason why people are so furious is the fact that Cecil was a famous lion. He was known to have enjoyed human contact and was deeply loved by Zimbabweans. Hunting big game is common, but even regular hunters saw Cecil differently. Zimbabweans - and indeed the world - consider his brutal murder a serious breach, one that harks back to troubling colonial practices of cheating sub-Saharan Africans of their natural resources and legacies.
The biggest question is this: does Cecil's death represent a much larger threat that lions face from humans today? Apparently it does. The National Geographic reported that a century ago, about 2,00,000 lions roamed Africa, but now there are less than 30,000, all considered "highly vulnerable". Some people, however, have claimed that controlled legal hunting helps preserve endangered species, even if individual animals are killed. But can trophy hunting ever aid conservation? In 2006, a researcher, Peter A. Lindsey, spoke to more than 100 people who had hunted in Africa or were planning to do so. He discovered that many were reluctant to hunt in places where cheetahs or wild dogs are illegally killed, or in nations that deliberately exceed their quotas.
But the situation differs in the case of lions. An Oxford research team that was studying Cecil examined the impact of legal lion hunting outside the park on lion populations within it. It found that legal hunting adversely affected the numbers inside the park; the killing of each male on the park's boundaries led to a territorial vacuum which lured males from deeper inside the protected area to the park's edges, where they fell prey to hunters. After this finding, lion hunting around the park was suspended till 2009; as a result, lion numbers shot up exponentially.
Legal hunting remains at odds with conservation efforts. Hunters keep breaking or bending the laws. Moreover, I cannot quite comprehend the desire to kill a beautiful animal for fun, even if the target is an aged male who no longer breeds. Legally condoning the trade of licences to kill an animal for sport highlights the value our societies place on animal lives. There is every reason to be alarmed at the message this spreads - that killing an animal for fun is fine as long as you can shell out the money.
It is upsetting to think about what awaits Cecil's family now that he is gone. Cecil and another male, Jericho, led two prides, which included six lionesses and 12 cubs. Without Cecil, the family is in grave danger, as the protection of prides from other lions is generally the responsibility of the males. Upon attaining a position of dominance, a new male often kills his predecessor's cubs, resulting in an entire generation in a pride being wiped out. Jericho will put up a fight, but he may not be able to defend so many cubs singlehandedly from new male lions that enter their turf. In an act of cowardice that ought to surprise none, Palmer has been in hiding for more than a week.
