Zimbabwe's 'iconic' lion Cecil killed by hunter

[nan]

well done
tiny step after tiny step...

[Lisbeth]

Little by little......

The concerned countries (where the animals live) seem to be quite a lot slower in reacting to the progressive danger of extinction of their wild animals

[Lisbeth]

The great emptiness is upon us
BY OSCAR NKALA - 7 NOVEMBER 2016 - OXPECKERS

Fifteen months after Zimbabwe’s two infamous lion killings earned the Lower Dete Valley its reputation as the graveyard of Hwange National Park’s big cats, Oscar Nkala visited the area to find out whether the hunting business model has changed.


Valley of death: sources say the illegal hunting on private reserves around Hwange National Park is much worse than before Cecil was killed. Photo courtesy WildCRU

The killing of Zimbabwe’s iconic lion, Cecil, has exposed rampant illegal hunting by the new owners of private game reserves bordering Hwange National Park.

Cecil was killed on Antoinette Farm, owned by Honest Ndlovu, one of the beneficiaries of President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land acquisition programme in the Lower Dete Valley.

The collared subject of an international lion research project, Cecil died on July 1 2015 after he was shot with a bow and arrow by American dentist Walter Palmer. Theo Bronkhorst, the professional hunter who finally killed the lion hours later with a hunting rifle, still faces charges of not preventing an illegal hunt.

Antoinette Farm is one of several resettled private game reserves adjacent to the southern rim of Hwange, which according to researchers is Zimbabwe’s only remaining lion territory. Locals say at least 50 lions are offered annually for trophy hunts across Zimbabwe.

After the exposure in August 2015 of another illegal lion hunt on Railway Farm 31, the Zimbabwean parks authority imposed a ban on the hunting of lions, elephants and leopards, as well as all forms of bow-hunting, in and around Hwange.

The second controversial hunt took place on a property owned by Headman Sibanda, a local hunter and owner of Nyala Safaris. He was accused of conducting an illegal bow hunt with Jan Seski, an American gynaecologist and a member of the Alaskan Bow Hunting Association.

According to parks sources in Hwange, the second hunt was questionable because Railway Farm 31 had no lion hunting quota for the entire 2015 hunting season. Sibanda had received a single lion hunting permit in 2015, but this was for another hunting concession in Lupane.

The wildlife authority responded by revoking Sibanda’s hunting permit and suspending his sport hunting quota for 2015. In September last year he applied to the Bulawayo High Court challenging the decision on the grounds that it infringed his legitimate business interests. Judgment is still pending.

The hunting ban imposed by the government after these two infamous lion hunts lasted for less than two weeks, due to pressure from the indigenous hunting lobby of new farm owners. This group who received game reserves as part of the land reform exercise includes high-ranking ruling Zanu-PF party officials, security commanders and cabinet ministers.

Despite its short tenure, the ban helped to create the impression that the government authorities were cracking down on illegal hunting and tightening controls over the allocation and management of hunting quotas. Parks authorities say the hunting ban remains in force on Antoinette farm, where Cecil was killed, and Railway Farm 31, where the second lion was killed.

Sibanda was arrested and appeared in Hwange court on October 28 2016 in connection with the illegal hunting of an elephant, sable, zebra, giraffe and a roan antelope on Railway Farm 31. Roan are classified as a specially protected species and illegal killing them carries a mandatory nine-year sentence.

Sibanda is a former game ranger of the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and he operated for years in the Gwayi, Hwange and Matetsi National Parks until 2002, when he was allocated at least three game farms that were seized by the government from their white owners. In addition to Railway Farm 31 in Lower Dete, Sibanda was allocated a portion of Nyala Farm in Gwayi Conservancy and another hunting property in the Kana Block Conservancy in Lupane, another wildlife-rich district located south-east of Hwange.

In the valley

At Half Way Hotel in the Lower Dete Valley, Oxpeckers met a specialist big-cat hunter who has operated legally and illegally for various outfits across the Dete Valley, Hwange National Park, Matetsi and Zambezi National Parks for more than 20 years.

After going freelance five years ago, he now spends most of his life hanging around the hotel, waiting for the rare tourist who may require the services of a professional hunter.

Key among his concerns nowadays is that business is slow due to the dearth of big cats that characterises the Lower Dete Valley and nearby Gwayi Valley Conservancy, another resettled conservation area bordering Hwange.

“In 2005 we told the new farm owners that the great emptiness was coming, but they did not listen. So we hunted the lions and leopards in droves, as if they hatched like chickens,” said the hunter, who asked not to be identified for fear of victimization.

“Today there are no leopards left in Dete and Gwayi. The parks authority knows that too, and to make up for it they now issue a single leopard hunting quota to cover six or seven farms.

“Even then, many hunts are regularly called off without any leopard sightings. The great emptiness is upon us.”

He said the wild lions of the Lower Dete Valley have also been wiped out, and hunting outfits now rely on baiting lions out of Hwange to satisfy their clients. “The illegal hunting is much worse than before Cecil’s death,” he said.

His assessment was corroborated by a Hwange-based lion researcher, who said there were no more leopards left in the greater Hwange National Park area. The Hwange lion population faces three major threats that could precipitate its extinction unless urgent measures are taken to protect them, he said.

“The first major threat comes from hunting, both illegal and legal. From my experience, nearly 70% of the known, collared lions which died in recent years were shot by trophy hunters on farms adjacent to the park.

“Secondly, due to the scarcity of lions outside the national park, private hunting operators with properties adjacent to Hwange have resorted to the widespread use of baiting to lure the animals on to their properties to be sold off and shot.

“There is just a railway line to separate the park from the private land, so baiting them out of the national park is very easy. Because they move in prides, entire lion families can be lured out to sure death in a single baiting operation,” the researcher said.


Skulls adorn a hunting camp on one of the reserves bordering Hwange. Sources say there are no leopards left to hunt in Lower Dete and Gwayi

Triangle of death

Some of the Hwange lions which survive the baiting and hunting are rarely able to dodge the third threat, which is posed by the magnified human-animal conflict which resulted from the resettlement of families in game reserves during Mugabe’s controversial land acquisition programme.

The conflict is more pronounced in Gwayi Valley ranches such as Chamankanu, where more than 200 livestock herder families were resettled and given portions of wildlife-rich land to run local tourism ventures.

The researcher said most lions, often driven out of the shrinking game reserve habitat by a lack of prey animals and widespread water shortages, end up in conflict with livestock farmers when they prey on livestock. When communities report the incursions, the lions are summarily shot in terms of the Problem Animal Control programme.

“It is not uncommon for people in communities adjacent to Hwange to sleep in cattle pens to guard their livestock against predators. People lose plenty of livestock to the lions and hyenas, but the government should find ways of preventing the animals from straying
out of the park in the first place. Killing is not a sustainable way to manage the human-animal conflict,” said the researcher.

He said another problem with Problem Animal Control is that some of the hunters contracted by rural councils to run the programme abuse the system by killing animals which are sighted near villages even though they have caused no problems.

“In Tsholotsho [south of Hwange]in we had a case in which the hunter would kill all lions seen near the villages, and inform the council later. In some cases, he never reported the killings to the authorities,” he said.

Parks and Wildlife Management Authority spokesperson Caroline Washaya-Moyo said ongoing investigations had revealed numerous irregularities and some unethical hunting practices around Hwange National Park. She said the authority was in the process of
introducing changes aimed at putting an end to illegal trophy hunting.

Zimbabwean Environment, Water and Climate Minister Oppah Muchinguri declined to comment on the status of the big cats in Hwange and Lower Dete.

The Cecil summit

Despite failing to improve the plight of lions in Hwange, Cecil remains effective in raising global awareness about the plight of lions. In September, Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), which monitors Cecil’s remaining pride in Hwange,
convened the “Cecil summit” to renew global commitment to save African lions.

According to WildCRU, the lion population has declined by 90% over the past century, leaving an estimated 20,000 lions alive on the African continent. The combined lion rangeland has shrunk to just over one million square kilometres in the same period.

The summit produced a five-point declaration of renewed commitment to African lion conservation through programming that is tailor-made to enhance the protection of lion
populations.

The plan calls for the restoration of rangelands known as lion-scapes in a way that would
reinstate the economic and social value of lions across Africa in perpetuity, inspiring local communities to take pride in their lions and establishing fairness in conservation practices.

“Lion conservation has the world’s attention as never before. The Cecil summit is a continuation of an evolving discussion with members of Africa’s nation states, who must be part of the solution to save our global heritage,” said WildCRU director David MacDonald. – oxpeckers.org

Read orginal article: http://oxpeckers.org/2016/11/the-great- ... s-upon-us/

[Mel]

Ahja... now I remember why not to go to Zim anymore. You were right, Lis... No way to support those atrocities

[Flutterby]

[Lisbeth]

Charges dropped against #CecilTheLion killers
2016-11-14 08:35 - Louzel Lombard Steyn


Cecil the lion in Hwange National Park.(Bryan Orford, YouTube)

Wildlife-lovers across the globe who are still mourning the death of the Zimbabwean lion Jericho, Cecil the lion's best friend, now also have to come to terms that #CecilTheLion's hunters will not be charged for his illegal hunt.

Despite a global call for conservation justice, Zimbabwe has officially dropped charges against both the American hunter and the local professional hunter who organised the trip.

Walter Palmer, a USD dentist from Minnesota, shot and killed Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park just over a year ago on 1 July 2015. The lion's death sparked outrage locally and abroad, and a study taking stock of lion hunting one year after Cecil's death showed that the world was taking on a more aggressive stance against the hunting of these iconic African creatures.

Regardless, the Zim court threw out charges against both parties. It ruled that the charges against Theo Bronkhorst "were too vague to enable him to mount a proper defence,” BBC News reported. He had been charged with failing to stop an illegal hunt.

His accomplice, Honest Ndlovu, the owner of the farm where Cecil was shot, did not have a permit or quota to kill the lion. Ndlovu also faced charges of allowing an illegal hunt to occur on his property.

The status of his case remains unclear, National Geographic reports.

At the time of his killing, Cecil was being studied by scientists at Oxford University and had been wearing a GPS collar when he was killed. He was shot on Ndlovu's farm, adjacent to the Hwange National Park, where he occasionally roamed, according to the GPS data.

Palmer reportedly paid $54 000, or around R775 000, to bow-hunt Cecil. After an unsuccessful first attempt at killing Cecil, Palmer and his hunting team tracked Cecil for another 11 hours before killing him, NatGeo reports.

The only good thing that may come from Cecil’s death is that scientists hope incident has spurred interest in lion conservation.

Lion numbers have declined precipitously in the wild, down from an estimated 200 000 continent-wide a century ago to about 20 000 today.

Despite honourable attempts to protect these critically endangered lions in Africa, the species suffered another devastating blow when did not get uplisted at the recent CITES CoP17, held in SA.

Nine African nations, namely Niger, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Togo wanted to raise protection for lions by uplisting them to Appendix I, the maximum level of protection.

The move was intended to end the lion bone trade.

But the African Lions will remain on CITES Appendix II list for another year, which technically means a “zero annual export quota for bones, bone pieces, products, claws, skeletons, skulls and teeth removed from the wild and traded for commercial purposes.”

This means that lion products, parts or derivatives obtained through captive breeding are still legally trade-able, despite the fact that it is nearly impossible to distinguish between wild and captive bred animals once they have been killed.

[Lisbeth]

Did Oxford University researchers sanction hunting of Cecil the lion and his son, Xanda?



When thousands of people donated nearly R20-million to the Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) after the killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, their assumption was that they were helping to protect Hwange lions. They were mistaken and this is why, writes DON PINNOCK.

When the much-loved Zimbabwean lion named Cecil was killed by a crossbow hunter, it was a crisis for a pride of lions in Hwange National Park and a public relations bonanza for lion conservation.
News of the hunt by American dentist Walter Palmer was released by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), an Oxford University team monitoring him by satellite collar. It ignited a massive global outcry against trophy hunting and Palmer was forced into hiding. Facebook pictures of him bare chested and hugging a dead leopard stoked the fire.

The US talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel issued a tearful appeal to support WildCRU’s conservation and the organisation could barely cope with the resulting flood of requests for interviews and information which followed.

The money flowed in. Within 24 hours of the broadcast, 2 600 people had donated more than $150 000. A month later it was $360 000 and it soon climbed above a million dollars in donations to Cecil’s memory and lion protection.

A Texas artist printed a sketch of Cecil on tote bags and donated the proceedings of their sale. A Chicago toy maker created a cute Cecil ‘beanie baby’ and sent the profits to WildCRU. American philanthropist Thomas Kaplan matched donations up to $100 000.

The expectation was that WildCRU would use the money to protect lions in the park and prevent any future such killings. With the equivalent of nearly R20-million in the bank, it found no fault with this. But were they in a position to comply?

The answer came two years later when Cecil’s son, Xanda, a pride leader with a WildCRU collar, was shot by a professional hunter named Richard Cooke just outside the borders of Hwange near where Cecil died. Cooke, it turned out, had also killed Xanda’s four-year-old brother in 2015.

Xanda was six years old and a father with several young cubs, most of whom would probably have been killed without him to defend them. There was understandable media outrage following the hunt. An international lobby coalition, Tourists Against Trophy Hunting, called for an immediate end to trophy killing in Zimbabwe.

WildCRU’s response was puzzling and, for the thousands of people who donated to the Cecil fund, disappointing. The unit’s research fellow, Dr Andrew Loveridge, said Xanda was “a very, very lovely animal” and it was “sad that anyone wanted to shoot a lion”, but offered no condemnation of the killing.

Richard Cooke, Loveridge said, was one of the “good” guys. “He is very ethical, he doesn’t cut corners. He has always communicated with us when he has hunted an animal and given us the collar back. He’s not one of the fly-by-night guys. His hunt was legal and Xanda was over six years old so it is all within the stipulated regulations.”

Loveridge added that Cooke “has killed several collared lions in the past,” is a responsible operator and had a legal quota for the hunt. In response to a question about the hunt, Loveridge SMSed: “I believe Richard Cooke was aware of this lion being collared. He is always good about liaising with us. We don’t have any special protection in place for collared animals. So no issue on this from our side. We just need the collar back undamaged as has happened in this case.”

In reply to my query, Loveridge said that, given that hunting is the way African countries choose to legitimately manage their wildlife resources, “we should acknowledge those professionals who obey the rules and regulations set out by wildlife management authorities to safeguard wildlife”.

According to a report in The Times, Cooke said he checked with WildCRU before pulling the trigger. If true, that’s as close as it gets to sanctioning the hunt. Given the massive worldwide blow back from the death of Cecil, this response seems extraordinary. But is it?

With around 20 000 wild lions left in Africa, you’d imagine considerable antipathy between hunters and researchers with conservation in their unit’s title. Those donating in Cecil’s name certainly thought so. But on the ground, the distinction is blurred. The signals may seem confusing, but only if you think WildCRU’s role is to protect lions.

Within the field of biological sciences, an outfit like WildCRU is important to Oxford, not for the protection of lions so much as the attraction of postgraduate students and funding. University research units are, among other things, degree factories cautious about research permits.

In that sense, WildCRU’s survival is more important than the life of a trophy lion. Its job is to understand lions, not protect them. You definitely don’t want to fall foul of a foreign government and lose your licence to be there. And when hunters are a powerful lobby, you need their support.

This is one of the reasons why so many research units in Africa “do science” – often very valuable science – but do nothing to to change the situation on the ground. They remain “neutral”.

WildCRU is no exception. For the past 20 years it has been collaring and studying lions in the park. Its research is highly respected and the unit is the source of many scientific papers. Peace Parks Foundation programme manager Paul Bewsher described Dr Andrew Loveridge, as a great researcher whose work in Hwange is “really exciting and extremely insightful”.

WildCRU says all the right things. A study by the Unit’s head, Professor David Macdonald, Loveridge and others found that sport hunters in the safari areas surrounding Hwange killed 72% of tagged adult males from the study area. Over 30% of all males shot were sub-adult.

A later study by Loveridge and others flags concern that if wide ranging wildlife species cannot be protected even by large national parks, then the long-term future of these charismatic species may be bleak.

“The rule of thumb that a six-year-old male lion is post-reproductive and can therefore be hunted,” he told me. “This is in my experience incorrect and I believe this should be acknowledged in hunting policy and recommendations. We’re also recommending that a no-hunting buffer should be implemented around national parks to prevent hunters baiting and shooting park lions that are regularly viewed by tourists.”

But – so puzzling for activists – the objective counterpoint. Twelve months after the controversial killing of Cecil, WildCRU issued a report to the UK government saying lion trophy hunting was “good for conservation”. Hunting, it said, “can contribute to lion conservation … which constitutes a good reason to tolerate it at least on land that might otherwise be lost to the lion estate”.

In support of its position, WildCRU argued that its role was merely “to provide evidence based on research to policy makers and conservationists. For the Hwange project, they engage with anyone who has a lawful interest in big cat numbers, which includes groups and organisations on both sides of the hunting debate. For that reason, WildCRU itself does not take a position, but simply continues to gather data, analyse it and disseminate the information”. This neutrality is costly. According to reports in the Zimbabwean press, 131 lions collared by WildCRU were shot dead between 2006 and 2015 after they had strayed out of Hwange – about 15 a year (WildCRU says this figure is 20). Most of these would be large males.

In just 21 years Africa has lost 42% of its wild lions. Following a study in 2012, the National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative found lions in Zimbabwe to be “in trouble”. Almost 700 lion trophies were legally exported during the decade under review (2001-2012) but the wild population was estimated at 850 (WildCRU estimates it at 1,500).

“This suggests that, at the current rate and if lion numbers don’t increase, which is unlikely, in another decade trophy hunters alone will have wiped out nearly all remaining lions in Zimbabwe.”

According to Earthtouch News, it also seems that Xanda’s killing contravened the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority policy. This states that male lions of any age known to be leading prides, or known to be part of a coalition heading prides with dependent cubs of 18 months old or younger, should not be hunted.

Given a continent-wide lion population decline and the expectations of thousands of people who donated money for their protection, is WildCRU’s “even-handed” approach reasonable? I asked Dr Pieter Kat of Lion Aid, who has worked with lions in Botswana and Kenya and met with Loveridge. He didn’t think so.

“If WildCRU are scientists, they should be saying there are far too many male lions being shot in Zimbabwe to be sustainable. But hunters have power – they’re a force WildCRU needs to recognise in terms of their long-term viability in Zim. If hunters turn against them, their tenure on Zim won’t last very long.

“However, though it’s not against the law to shoot a collared lion in Zim, has WildCRU ever gone to the government to ask that collared lions not be shot? I doubt whether they have. Why not?

When I met with WildCRU I asked them: “Is your view of sustainable lion hunting based on the fact that the national park will supply lions to hunters who lure them out onto the hunting areas? If lion hunting is sustainable then the hunting areas should be stuffed with lions.”

But they couldn’t answer because they’d never counted the lions in the hunting concessions. And the hunters wouldn’t allow them to for obvious reasons. The concessions are relying on Hwange lions and they know it.

“WildCRU may claim that lion hunting serves to preserve a biome, but it cannot show that it actually benefits the conservation of the species. No hunting operator collecting income or a government collecting trophy fees ever returns any of that money to lion conservation.”

Hunting companies, he pointed out, are also not under any pressure from their clients to be more conservation oriented and are similarly under no pressure from rent seeking governments to take care of wildlife on their concessions.

“We want to know where that $1.3-million from Cecil went. We don’t see any investment in Hwange lions. These guys are getting huge amounts of money but allowing lions to be shot. Of course they’re protecting their research permit.”

So does WildCRU think trophy hunting is good or bad for lions? Its preferred position, it seems, is on the fence. With lions in Africa under terrible threat, history may not judge them well on that.

[Dindingwe]

An Inside Look at Cecil the Lion’s Final Hours

A new book by lion researcher Andrew Loveridge reveals previously unreported details about Walter Palmer’s killing of Cecil.


By Wildlife Watch

PUBLISHED March 3, 2018

When Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist and avid trophy hunter, killed Cecil the Lion in July 2015, the incident ignited a furor. For Oxford University biologist Andrew Loveridge, who had been studying Cecil for the past eight years, it was devastating.

The incident spurred the wildlife biologist to take stock of what happened in a memoir, Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa’s Iconic Cats, to be published on April 10 by Regan Arts and exclusively excerpted here by Wildlife Watch. The book also covers lion conservation and behavior.

Loveridge, of Oxford University’s WildCRU, a conservation research unit, is one of the lead researchers in a team studying lions in the Hwange area, in northwestern Zimbabwe, to understand better the complexities of lion societies. According to Loveridge, 42 of their collared male study animals, including Cecil, have been trophy-hunted since the research began in 1999.

The circumstances surrounding Cecil’s hunt are at best murky, and according to Loveridge, media articles have reported factual errors. This excerpt from Loveridge’s book, abridged and edited for style, is based on his interviews with people involved in the hunt, statements made by those involved, and analysis of the location data collected via satellite from the GPS collar Cecil wore at the time he died.

An excerpt of Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa's Iconic Cats is reprinted below with arrangement by Regan Arts, copyright Andrew Loveridge, 2018.

THE AIR BORE THE CHILL of the Southern Hemisphere winter, the Kalahari sand readily giving up the day’s heat to a clear, star-peppered sky. Jackals yipped in the distance. Fiery-necked nightjars called to each other, their shrill onomatopoeic cry—“Good Lord deliver us”—was a plaintive supplication to the silent gods of the African wilderness. Otherwise the night was still.

Cecil, the 12-year-old male lion, padded along the dirt track with leisurely strides, soundless except for the crystal scratch of sand under his soup plate–size feet. His coal-black mane proclaimed his status as the undisputed king of this part of the savanna. He paused only to scent-spray roadside bushes, maintaining his domain’s signposts in a routine he had followed every night since he had become a territorial male nearly a decade before. He underlined his aromatic signature with vigorous scrapes of his hind paws.

The scent of a dead elephant drew the lion forward, enticing him to what long experience had taught him was another free meal. He had often fed on elephants. But there was something different about this carcass, something beyond this cat’s experience of things to avoid. He could sense the presence of humans. No matter how quiet we think we are, how little scent we think we exude, animals pick up the tiniest cues. The rustle of clothing, the smell of toothpaste and deodorant, gun oil and plastic—they all stand out in a wild animal’s sensory world like a snowflake in a coal mine.

Humans didn’t worry him. He was used to their scent from years of living in a prime photographic safari concession in the park. But these were not the humans he knew. To minimize the scent and sound that would drift across the clearing, these humans were hiding in a tree platform downwind of the carcass. Crouched on a small platform was an American with a broad, white smile, a powerful compound bow, and a quiver full of lethally sharp arrows. He was flanked by a stocky Zimbabwean guide.

It would have been freezing cold to sit agonizingly still in the cramped hide, but the hunters would have comforted themselves that the wait wouldn’t be long. This was an easy lion to hunt—a park lion, well-fed and habituated to people.

The big cat sniffed the clearing. The draw of the elephant meat overcame the lion’s caution, and he approached the carcass. He settled down to feed, tearing at the tough, dry meat with scissor-like teeth. He fed for a few minutes, oblivious to the hunter taking up the tension on his bow.

OUR RESEARCH PROJECT STAFF only became aware that something was amiss six days later. Project field assistant Brent Stapelkamp was routinely checking all the GPS downloads from the satellite collars we’d fitted on the study lions. He noticed that Cecil’s satellite collar hadn’t transmitted any data since July 4. Initially he assumed that the collar had malfunctioned, although this seemed surprising given that it had recently been fitted, and its batteries were new.

Then on July 7 project staff started to hear that a lion had been hunted in the Gwaai Conservancy, a privately owned wildlife area adjacent to Hwange National Park, where we study lions.

In the small Hwange community, nothing of any consequence stays secret for long. Brent was sufficiently concerned to alert the National Parks management staff at Main Camp that an illegal hunt may have taken place. The park senior ecologist replied, “No legal hunt for a lion this year” and asked that the seemingly illegal hunt be reported to the National Parks wildlife officers at Hwange Main Camp.

Since there was no paperwork for a lion hunt in the areas concerned, and no quota to hunt a lion in the Gwaai, the senior wildlife officer ordered an investigation. National Parks requested that our project assist them by providing transport. Andrea Sibanda, one of the project field assistants, duly drove a National Parks ranger to investigate the rumors.

Andrea had started his conservation career as an anti-poaching ranger. His detective training in wildlife crime came in handy during the following days. He and the ranger’s first port of call was the Hide, a photographic safari lodge.

A friend of Andrea’s had mentioned that some hunting staff from Antoinette farm—a 25-five-square-kilometer parcel located in the Gwaai—had visited the Hide a few nights before. They were flush with money and looking to buy booze. On consuming the same, they became talkative and were soon boasting about the huge lion that had been hunted a few days before. This successful hunt had resulted in their receiving a large tip from a very satisfied trophy hunter.

The Hide camp staff suspected that the lion killed was Cecil, one of the two magnificent male lions for whom they had developed a special affection. Only one of the area’s males, Jericho, had been seen since July 1, and he had spent several nights calling—in their opinion calling for his dead friend Cecil.

Armed with this information, Andrea and the ranger visited Antoinette farm. The wily Andrea soon extracted information out of the hunting camp staff there. The park ranger obtained signed statements from tracker Cornelius Ncube, who had assisted with the hunt, and camp skinner Ndabezinhle Ndebele, who had skinned the dead lion.

According to Cornelius, another hunting client had shot an elephant the previous week. The owner of Antoinette farm, Honest Ndlovu, had instructed the camp staff to keep an eye on the elephant carcass and to inform him if any lions came to feed. As it happened, two large males and a pride of females came to feed on the carcass the night after the hunt. This was reported to Ndlovu.

ON JULY 1 CORNELIUS WAS INSTRUCTED to prepare for a lion hunt, which would be undertaken by a foreign client, later identified as Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota. Guiding Palmer would be Zimbabwean professional hunter Theo Bronkhorst and his son, Zane.

The hunting party arrived at the Antoinette camp at mid-morning and settled into their rustic accommodation. In the late afternoon Bronkhorst took Cornelius to the elephant carcass, which they moved, presumably by dragging it behind a Land Cruiser, to a suitable location approximately 300 meters away. Cornelius then assisted with the construction of a platform and hunting blind in a nearby tree overlooking the elephant carcass. Blind completed, Cornelius was then driven back to camp. Bronkhorst and Palmer later returned to wait for a lion.

In the early hours of the next morning Bronkhorst returned to the camp and woke up Cornelius, instructing him to come and assist them with a wounded lion. The professional hunter stated that they “had shot a lion with a bow and arrow, and they were waiting for it to die.

This is somewhat at odds with Bronkhorst’s own account of the incident—as related to Peta Thornycroft, a reporter for Britain’s Telegraph—in which he claimed he was unsure whether the lion had been hit by Palmer’s arrow.

Cornelius returned to the scene of the hunt with Bronkhorst and noted that in the darkness he could “hear [the lion] struggling to breathe.”

It is clear that Cecil was at this stage mortally wounded and hadn’t moved far from where he was shot. This is corroborated by the GPS data from Cecil’s collar, which allows a forensic reconstruction of events. The collar sent a position from the hunt site at just before 9 p.m. By 11 p.m. the collar’s position had moved 80 meters roughly southeast from the carcass. It therefore seems probable Cecil was shot at some point between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on July 1.

Subsequent positions sent from Cecil’s collar show that he moved in a southeasterly direction until 7 a.m. on July 2. In about eight hours the wounded animal had moved only 160 meters from the point at which he’d been shot. Eventually, according to Cornelius, Bronkhorst advised Palmer to “finish the lion off.” If Bronkhorst’s later statements are accurate, the hunters went to administer a coup de grace at around 9 a.m.

Leaving Cornelius in the hunting blind, the pair went off in the vehicle to find the lion. According to the collar’s GPS data, by now Cecil had moved a distance of about 350 meters from the point where he was wounded. A second arrow killed Cecil. Bronkhorst and Palmer returned to the hunting blind about 45 minutes later with the dead lion in the back of the hunting vehicle.

In media reports it was widely touted that Cecil suffered in agony for 40 hours. This claim is inaccurate and exaggerated. It’s unlikely he’d have lived that long with such a severe thoracic injury. However, he most definitely did not die instantly and almost certainly suffered considerably. Judging from the events described by Cornelius and the data sent by the GPS collar, the injured lion most likely was killed 10 to 12 hours after being wounded.

THE HUNTERS THEN RETURNED to the camp, and Cornelius and Ndabezinhle, the skinner, were instructed to skin the dead lion and begin preservation of the trophy. Normally this would involve removing and salting the skin, which must be done promptly to avoid damage to the hide. Later the head would be removed from the carcass, and the tissue stripped off. The head would then be boiled and cleaned to the bone. Together, the skin and cleaned skull make up the “trophy” that a hunter would take home for display.

But Cornelius and Ndabezinhle were ordered to leave the skinned carcass intact and load it onto the hunter’s vehicle, along with the preserved skin. This was unusual, as the carcass, minus skin and head, has little value and is usually discarded in situ.

Bronkhorst and Palmer then drove off, according to both Cornelius and Ndabezinhle, heading for Matetsi a few hours’ drive away. It seems likely that Bronkhorst, well aware that there was no quota for a lion to be hunted on Antoinette farm, was removing any evidence of the hunt. It is also probable that he was intending to report the lion as having been hunted in Matetsi Safari Area, or one of the other hunting areas northwest of Hwange, where there were lions on the hunting quota. This administrative sleight of hand is known as “quota swapping” and is unfortunately common in the hunting industry.

There were other anomalies in the case that carry a heavy whiff of impropriety. The National Parks manager of the area had previously mandated that a ranger accompany trophy hunts for lions in the Gwaai area to ensure that all necessary regulations were followed. This local regulation was not adhered to.

Another thread of evidence suggests that the hunters had every intention of concealing their activities. Cecil’s satellite collar had functioned perfectly until 6:53 a.m. on July 4, two days after the lion was killed. Thereafter it ceased to send any further information and vanished without a trace. This seems an odd coincidence. Cornelius, the tracker, says that when he saw the dead lion in the back of the hunting vehicle, there was no collar. But he noticed that “the mane looked separated in the neck as if it had previously been caught in a wire snare.” This suggests that Bronkhorst and Palmer removed the collar in the 45 minutes between driving off in search of the wounded animal and returning with the lion’s body in the vehicle.

Bronkhorst claimed in media interviews that he hadn’t known that the lion was collared and wouldn’t have hunted it if he had known. Palmer, once his involvement had been publicly revealed, stated that he “had no idea that the lion [he] took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt.” Bronkhorst admits that he “panicked” when he first saw the collar, which he then removed and hung in a tree close to where the lion had been killed. He later bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t handed it in to the National Parks officers. Clearly this would have been the responsible and ethical course of action, though one that would have required an explanation of how his client had come to hunt a lion in an area with no hunting quota.

Walter Palmer allegedly paid $50,000 to shoot Cecil the lion with his bow. He didn’t deny that he’d hunted the lion, nor that the hunt had taken place in a restricted area. He claimed to have relied on his hunting guide, Bronkhorst, to obtain the necessary permissions, which is not unreasonable given that he was paying a considerable sum for the professional hunter’s services.

In a public statement, Palmer maintained, “Again, I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion.”

It’s possible that Palmer was remorseful and—in hindsight, knowing the hunt was likely to have been illegal—regretted his involvement. Nevertheless this was not the first time Palmer was alleged to have been involved in an illegal hunting trip. Following the furor over the Cecil hunt, American media uncovered his participation in a similar incident nine years earlier. On that occasion Palmer shot, again with a hunting bow, a large black bear in Wisconsin. Yes, he had a permit to hunt a bear, but he reportedly shot it 40 miles from his permit’s stipulated hunting area. It’s alleged that he subsequently offered substantial financial inducements to his hunting guides to lie about the location of the hunt.

Unfortunately for Palmer, the guides spilled the beans when the United States Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the bear incident. Palmer was charged with and, according to media accounts, found guilty of making false statements to a federal investigator, a felony. He received a fine of less than $3,000 and a year’s probation—effectively only a slap on the wrist.

In both cases Palmer appears to have gone to considerable lengths to obtain particularly large hunting trophies, exhibiting the obsession many wealthy American hunters have for getting record kills entered into the “trophy book” hunting associations such as Safari Club International keep for their members. According to Bronkhorst, after the successful lion hunt, the American asked whether “[they] would find him an elephant [with tusks] larger than 63 pounds.” Elephant trophies are traditionally measured by the weight of the largest tusk.

As Bronkhorst himself noted, this would require a prime-age elephant of a size that’s increasingly rare across Africa. Bronkhorst, perhaps regretfully, had to tell the avid hunter that he couldn’t find such a large elephant. It should also be noted that as of April 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had banned all imports of elephant hunting trophies from Zimbabwe under the Endangered Species Act. This ban was still in place in 2015. If Palmer had succeeded in killing a giant pachyderm, it’s unclear how the collector of exceptional trophies planned to get the ivory home.

WHAT I FIND MOST DIFFICULT about the whole incident is the apparent callousness with which the hunters undertook this hunt. The lion was a commodity to be collected, “taken” in hunting parlance. Concern for the pain and suffering of the animal never seems to have been a particular consideration. I find the thought of killing any animal purely for sport or pleasure abhorrent, but if it has to happen, it must be done cleanly and without undue stress or suffering.

Cecil suffered incredible cruelty for at least 10 hours, severely wounded and slowly dying. Cornelius recalled hearing the animal “struggling to breathe.” Clearly, although the wound was severe, the arrow had missed the vital organs or arteries that would have caused rapid blood loss and a relatively quick death. Certainly, the lion was so incapacitated that in all those hours he’d been able to move only 350 meters from the place where he was shot.

To kill a quarry animal quickly and efficiently is the hallmark of a good hunter. Yet Bronkhorst and Palmer had allowed an obviously stricken and mortally wounded animal to suffer for more than 10 hours before attempting a final kill. Perhaps part of the explanation is that Palmer was hoping to submit this obviously large trophy to a hunting record book as a bow-hunted specimen. This precluded the use of a firearm to dispatch the animal, as that would render the trophy ineligible as a bow-hunt record. One possibility, therefore, is that the hunters were content to leave the lion to die from its first catastrophic injury with no further intervention. When the lion didn’t oblige them, they were presented hours later with the inconvenience of shooting it with another arrow. If this was the case, Cecil the lion died slowly and painfully to allow a hunter the ultimate vanity of claiming he had killed a huge lion with a bow and arrow.

I clearly recall the last time I saw Cecil. It was May 2015. My colleague Jane Hunt and I had been tracking him via the signal from his collar. We followed him a short distance before he flopped down on the road. From the scrub, spur fowl cackled their displeasure as he lay leisurely sniffing at the early evening breeze. We sat in the Land Cruiser a few meters away, taking photographs. He couldn’t have been less concerned by our presence.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... loveridge/

[Dindingwe]

That is an horrendous report of Cecil's death. I don't understand how people can continue to hunt for their pleasure...

I am not sure if that is Cecil, but I think it is. Anyway, that's a nice male that I took in October 2010 at Hwange, in the same area that Cecil used to roam (around Makololo concession).

[Flutterby]

I agree with you Dindingwe, I cannot understand anyone getting pleasure from killing an animal!!