Dentist who shot Cecil the Lion returns to work

He said he is “a little heartbroken at the disruption” to the lives of his office staff and patients.

“I need to get back to treating my patients”, Mr Palmer said.

He shut the practice in late July amid a firestorm of protests after he was publicly identified as the hunter who killed the rare black-maned lion weeks before.

In July, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., introduced legislation aimed at curtailing trophy hunting called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act. “But I haven’t been in hiding”, he said.

“This has been especially hard on my wife and my daughter”, Palmer said in the interview published in the newspaper. “Now they don’t have a dad”, “May you never hunt again”, and “Justice for Cecil“.

To say Cecil’s death caused an uproar is putting it mildly. Some were not even satisfied of calling him a “killer”, for others even named him as “Satan” via social media.

Celebrities like model Cara Delevingne, actress Alyssa Milano and TV host Sharon Osbourne – who have a combined total of 8.39 million followers – joined in as well.

Palmer’s hosts – Theo Bronkhorst, a Zimbabwean professional hunter, and Honest Ndlovu, owner of the land on which Cecil was killed – should have ensured the hunt was legal, said Emmanuel Fundira, chairman of the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe.

He disputed conservationist accounts that the mortally lion wandered for 40 hours and was finished off with a gun, saying it was tracked down the next day and killed with an arrow. He was then skinned and beheaded.

AP reports that police in Minnesota have said they’re hoping media attention surrounding Palmer will soon subside.

The wild cat was a fixture in the Hwange National Park and had a Global Positioning System collar as part of Oxford University research. “Nobody in our hunting party knew before or after the name of this lion”, he added. But while Palmer’s guides on the hunt have either been charged or await charges for their involvement in Cecil’s killing, the Zimbabwean government’s pursuit of the dentist has cooled off amid fears it could hamper a lucrative hunting industry.

A representative of Palmer’s said Monday night that the dentist would have no statements Tuesday, having declared in the interview Sunday that he was done commenting to the news media. It was buried in his mane. However, the dentist keeps arguing that his hunting practices were legal. The American dentist sparked worldwide hate against himself when he shot Cecil, a well-loved lion in Zimbabwe. Its researchers had been tracking Cecil since 2008.

The lion was reportedly lured from the Hawnge National Park and endured a slow death with a bow and arrow over two days.