An American hunter and Minnesota dentist offered an apology but remains a target of criticism and scorn after admitting he killed a lion in the African nation of Zimbabwe, but said he thought it was a permitted, legal hunt.
Police have arrested two people and want the dentist, Dr. Walter Palmer (pictured below), to turn himself in after Palmer and his lured a protected lion off the property of a national park and killed it.
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Local animal advocates, including Jordan Joseph, a volunteer coordinator at Catty Shack, a wildlife sanctuary, are shocked and are sounding an alarm about big game hunting. They're not necessarily attacking all hunts, but they're concerned about the future of lions and other big cats.
"The question mark in my head is why? What was the actual need? In today's world, I don't see a necessity for it," Joseph said.
Joseph (pictured below) said she's concerned about another killing of an animal threatened by declining numbers.
Back in the 1950s, she said, you'd find an estimated 400,000 lions in the wild. Today, she said there are about 22,000.
"We look at how quickly leopards, jaguars and tigers have declined. The very same thing is happening with lions," Joseph said.
Joseph said she appreciated the apology, and allows that everyone can make a mistake. Joseph said she's not a hunter, but doesn't flatly condemn the practice.
She's more upset that the target of the hunter in this case is a protected animal, and one with no intrinsic value, other than as a trophy.
"For animal like that just going to be hanging on your wall. If he'd done some research, realized how threatened, how vulnerable they are, it might not be the animal he'd want to hunt," Joseph said.
Cecil the lion is the popular big cat killed in the hunt. Oxford University researchers had put a GPS collar on Cecil to track him.
The hunters seem to have wounded Cecil one night, found him the next day, then killed, skinned and beheaded the lion.
Palmer said he has not been contacted by the authorities in the case and hasn't been charged with a crime.