Why Pick Only On Palmer As A Lion Killer?

There aren’t enough words to describe Walter Palmer’s act of killing Cecil the Lion. Barbaric, disgusting, heinous, abominable are just a few.

First he lured the lion out of the park, then he shot the lion with a bow and arrow, and after 11 hours of tracking (based on the guide’s account and contrary to an earlier statement), found and killed him, taking the hide and head as a trophy. Palmer has been bashed and thrashed worldwide, on the internet and even in his own hometown where angry protesters have hung signs on his clinic. And rightly so.

But what makes Palmer more despicable than the 18,500 hunters who, since 2006, have paid a total of $201 million to hunt lions, elephants, rhinos, Cape buffalos and leopards in sub Saharan Africa? Further, according to Prof. David Macdonald, director of the Oxford University research program which Cecil was part of, the well-loved cat is not the only lion involved in the research program to die by illegal hunting. There were 23 more before him.

After the Palmer incident, another American, Dr. Jan Seski, now is also under investigation by the Zimbabwe government for the killing of another lion in April of this year, also in the vicinity surrounding Hwange National Park. But Dr. Seski’s case isn’t causing as much uproar as Dr. Palmer’s.

Does the lion’s popularity play a role in the high degree of publicity that its killing has generated? Cecil was a main tourist attraction of the Hwange National Park. He was one of the males in the pride and was a subject of research of Oxford University. But isn’t it unfair to the other lions and wild animals who were just as sordidly killed but were not publicly mourned?

Dr. Palmer has expressed regret over his actions and claims he thought everything was legal. He relied on the locals and didn’t know that Cecil was collared with a GPS or part of a study until the end of the hunt. Dereck Joubert of National Geographic Big Cats Initiative finds Palmer’s alibi feeble.

The dentist is an experienced hunter. He has shot chamois in Spain, sheep in California, elephants in Africa and a black bear in Wisconsin for which he was charged, placed on one year probation and fined almost $3,000 dollars. Luring an animal out using bait is also unethical, by universal standards. Add to that the guide’s claim that after they knew Cecil was an animal at the Hwange National Park, and had seen the GPS on his collar, Dr. Palmer had the temerity to ask the guides to find him a big elephant to hunt. That act showed nonchalance over Cecil’s death, not remorse.

On the other hand, Jeff Martinelli, owner of Luxury Hunts, a safari booking agency based in Pennsylvania, said in an interview that responsibility for compliance to local laws on hunting rests on the guides, not on the hunter who bought a hunt. Dennis Dunn, a hunter who has hunted with Palmer, says ethics compel hunters to pursue an animal that they have wounded and end its suffering as soon as possible, which is what Palmer did.

Another avid hunter, Dan Tichenor, sees Palmer as more a victim than a perpetrator, misled by his guides. According to the nuclear weapons scientist, Dr. Palmer has a long record of lawful hunting and he would not knowingly tarnish his own name.

Whatever the dentist’s detractors and defenders say, it does not exonerate him from killing a protected lion. But Palmer is just one of a number of wealthy and famous trophy hunters. And he is not the only one who has hunted and slain wild life illegally. Why single him out? Should not the others be tried by public opinion, too?