‘Sick hunters like Walter Palmer must be stopped taking their trophies across borders...’
Five years after big cat’s infamous killing, trophy hunter has been caught in the act once again
IN THE wake of Cecil the lion’s slaughter, the big cat’s killer Walter Palmer pathetically whined how the hunter had become the hunted by people who care about wildlife. The American dentist made himself out to be the victim as he scrambled to defend his bloodlust, moaning that everything would have been just fine had he only picked another target.
It wouldn’t.
The fact is many of us, increasingly so, find tracking down and shooting animals with a bow and arrow just for fun, a cruel, degrading, stomach-churning hobby.
After months in hiding following the global revulsion he sparked, the driller killer came out defending his actions, hoping his explanation would provide us with a better understanding. It didn’t.
On the fifth anniversary of Cecil’s death, we discovered not only has Palmer failed to stop hunting, but he’s still spending tens of thousands of dollars travelling the world for his sick trophies.
Over the weekend he was exposed for flying 5,800 miles from his home in Minnesota to Mongolia so that he could kill a near-endangered ram.
The 60-year-old paid up to £80,000 to hunt an Altai Argali known as “the crown jewel of sheep hunters”.
The price was twice what it cost to kill Cecil, who at the time was being tracked through a GPS satellite collar by a research team of the University of Oxford as part of a long-term study.
The only thing Palmer seems to have learned in the past five years is to now keep his face out of the pictures in which he celebrates his latest kill. The dentist was careful not to be seen with the lifeless ram, but carelessly a friend of his posted a Facebook picture of Palmer asleep on the hunt.
In 2015, the Minneapolis moaner wanted us to think he was full of regret.
If he were, he would have hung up his weapons, denounced hunting and made a sizeable donation to a charity dedicated to preserving lions in Africa.
Instead, all he gave us were crocodile tears.
The reality is people like him cannot be changed – only the laws they are bound by can.
Yet, despite the outrage Cecil’s death caused, little has changed in the industry. Each country must play its part, including the UK.
The Government has vowed to push on with a long-awaited ban on the importing of animal parts as trophies from hunting expeditions, following a manifesto promise.
Only last week, lawmakers were warned British hunters could be responsible for the “next Cecil” if they fail to ensure its big game ban includes lions.
The cats are the primary targets of UK sportsmen who are believed to have slain more than 60 since Palmer’s infamous kill.
Many have been slaughtered in ‘canned hunts’ whereby animals bred in captivity are then released into a fenced area to be killed.
Already some countries have decided to stop letting hunters take lion trophies across their borders.
Both Australia and France adopted a flat-out ban, while the US added new protections for lions under the Endangered Species Act, only to have them rolled back under Donald Trump.
Currently, there are only 20,000 lions left in the wild, although some experts believe the actual number could be as few as 13,000. In the 1950s some 450,000 roamed free.
It is shameful that today more than 600 lions are killed every year.
Until people like Palmer have the sick spoils of their sport banned from crossing international borders, preventing them from hanging these majestic animals on their walls, trophy hunting will continue.