Daily Mail

Agonising last hours of lion king killed for this man’s deadly vanity

Calls for US trophy hunter to be extradited amid global backlash

- From Tom Leonard in New York

THE American dentist who shot dead Cecil the lion last night faced worldwide revulsion and demands for his extraditio­n to Zimbabwe where two men involved in the killing have appeared in court.

Walter Palmer, 55, has gone into hiding after social media was swamped with vitriolic threats and angry protests that saw him dubbed ‘the most hated man on the internet’.

He has admitted that he used a hunting bow to shoot Cecil, the much-loved 13year- old star of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, after the lion was illegally lured out of his protected home with bait.

Palmer paid £32,000 to a local safari business for a hunting trip that has attracted internatio­nal fury.

The profession­al hunter who acted as Palmer’s guide and the owner of the land on which Cecil was killed both appeared in a Hwange court yesterday.

Theodro Bronkhorst, founder of Bushman Safaris, and farmer Honest Ndlovu face poaching charges after the authoritie­s said they did not have valid hunting permits.

If found guilty, both men – who were released on bail – could be fined £13,000 and jailed for up to ten years. As it emerged

‘A poor excuse of a

human being’

that Palmer has notched up at least 43 big game hunting ‘kills’, including a polar bear, leopard and mountain lion, he became the focus for rising internatio­nal revulsion at the so-called sport.

More than 440,000 people have so far signed a petition to Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe demanding ‘justice for Cecil’. It calls on the country to stop issuing hunting permits to kill endangered animals.

An army of celebritie­s have expressed outrage online. They included Sir Roger Moore, Joanna Lumley, Sharon Osbourne, Mia Farrow and model Cara Delevingne.

Miss Delevingne tweeted: ‘This #WalterPalm­er is a poor excuse of a human being!’

Joanna Lumley said simply: ‘This animal had a right to live’.

Ricky Gervais posted a photo of Cecil on his Twitter account, adding: ‘ I’m struggling to imagine anything more beautiful than this.’

The fury reached a peak with Ingrid Newkirk, the British president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, calling for Palmer to be executed. ‘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 … he needs to be extradited, charged and preferably hanged,’ she said.

In Bloomingto­n, Minnesota, police stepped up patrols around Palmer’s shuttered dentist’s practice as the Animal Rights Coalition called for a demonstrat­ion outside the office. The group said it aimed to ‘draw attention to the shameful conduct of Palmer’.

Mark Balma, an artist who has painted portraits of three British prime ministers and four US presidents, started working on a sixfoot portrait of Cecil outside Palmer’s surgery.

He said it would be sold with all proceeds going to World Wide Fund for Nature.

Protesters – some dressed as ‘dentist hunters’ – left stuffed lion toys outside his office and family home. A poster left on his surgery door said simply: ‘You are a coward and a killer!’ As Palmer went to ground, he sent a letter of apology to his patients, reiteratin­g that he ‘deeply regrets’ Cecil’s death but insisting he had relied on ‘ profession­al guides to ensure a legal hunt’.

But in his first admission of the controvers­ial nature of ‘one of my passions outside dentistry’, he Poaching charges: Honest Ndlovu made clear that he had kept it quiet from many of his patients for fear of causing offence. He explained: ‘I don’t often talk about hunting with my patients because it can be a divisive and emotionall­y charged topic’.

Palmer claims he had ‘no idea’ of the lion’s identity and had assumed the hunt was entirely legal.

The UK-based charity LionAid said it is legal to bait lions in Zimbabwe and also to kill them outside national parks during private hunting trips.

It believes the hunters principall­y broke the law because the landowner never obtained a ‘quota’ for the number of lions that could be killed on his property. Cecil’s killing on the land was therefore illegal.

The Zimbabwe authoritie­s also say the hunters should be prosecuted for poaching and paying bribes to ensure the hunt went ahead.

Although Palmer claims to be a responsibl­e hunter who acts within the law, in 2008 he was fined nearly £2,000 and put on probation after he admitted lying to federal officials about where he had shot a black bear in Wisconsin. He had a licence to kill a bear in an authorised zone but actually shot one 40 miles outside the area.

Palmer is a self-proclaimed ‘purist’ who always hunts with a bow, a popular weapon among those who say it offers a bigger challenge than using a gun.

Yet critics argue an arrow often only wounds an animal – as happened with Cecil – leaving it suffering. They point out, too, that bow hunting is silent, enabling hunters to kill animals in areas where they shouldn’t be operating.

The US does not officially regard the African lion as ‘endangered’ or ‘threatened’, limiting grounds for Palmer’s prosecutio­n at home.

But legal experts say Palmer, a father of two, could be prosecuted in the US for ‘ bribing’ wildlife guides to break the law by helping him kill the lion.

Alternativ­ely, he could be extradited to Zimbabwe to go on trial.

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 ??  ?? Trophy hunter: Walter Palmer, left, with another lion he killed
Protest: Angry messages – and stuffed animals – at his surgery
Storm of criticism: Walter Palmer has now been forced into hiding
Trophy hunter: Walter Palmer, left, with another lion he killed Protest: Angry messages – and stuffed animals – at his surgery Storm of criticism: Walter Palmer has now been forced into hiding
 ??  ?? In court: Theodro Bronkhorst
In court: Theodro Bronkhorst
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