Wisconsin dentist mistaken for killer of Cecil the lion

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has also opened an investigation into the killing of Cecil. The wounded cat was later tracked down and Palmer allegedly killed it with a gun, they said. She said that Cecil’s killing was “deliberate” because it had taken place on land where the owner had not been allocated a quota for lions, and a bow and arrow was used “to hide the illegal hunt by using a means that would not alert the rangers on patrol”.

After that, federal officials would have to decide whether it falls under the extradition treaty with Zimbabwe, which took effect in 2000.

The move came as it emerged that Dr Walter Palmer could also face a potential five-year jail term in the US and a $20,000 fine for breaching the Lacey Act, which enforces the legal protection for endangered species across the world.

“We get the proper permits, we do our due diligence to make sure that everything goes the way it’s supposed to”, he says.

He had designs on Cecil because he was one of the biggest lions around.

Richard Chibuwe, the deputy chief of mission at Zimbabwe’s embassy in Washington, said extradition would be a “last resort”.

Social media were filled with condemnation of the killing just outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. The southern African country has blamed its economic woes on U.S. sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and close associates, though many commentators have attributed Zimbabwe’s economic decline to mismanagement. More broadly, Mugabe has long railed against what he calls Western meddling in Africa, saying it is an extension of the colonial rule of the past.

Now both hunter and hunted, Palmer has ventured into a legal thicket that’s nearly certainly darker than he ever could have imagined. But they have not specified what charges might be laid against him, meaning it is unclear what penalty he could face if he is tried and convicted.

Bronkhorst, who organised the expedition, was granted bail by the Hwange courtroom on Wednesday after being charged with “failing to stop an unlawful hunt”.

Palmer, 55, wrote about the situation in a note to his patients.

Hundreds of protesters have gathered this week outside Palmer’s dental practice in Bloomington, Minnesota, CNN affiliate WCCO-TV in Minneapolis reported.

This comes as the guide who led that hunting trip in Zimbabwe suggests Cecil was not the only animal Palmer wanted to kill, CBS News’ David Begnaud reports.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe has suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in an area where a lion popular with tourists was killed, and is investigating the killing of another lion in April that may have been illegal, the country’s wildlife authority said Saturday.

“I think the other thing it raises for us is a real focus on human activities that threaten these animals, whether that’s through consumption of things like bush meat, through habitat loss, through the pet trade, or through entertainment of individuals”, she tells NEWS 1130.