Zimbabweans in lion hunt in court; kill was ‘unethical’

“He might be guilty as sin, or he might not have known anything about the circumstances in this hunt”, Dance said.

The social-media uproar continues against Walter Palmer, the man who shot and killed Cecil the lion – the star attraction of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park.

Cecil’s killing doesn’t appear to be the first time Palmer has gotten into trouble while hunting. According to the Zimbabwe Conservation Task, Cecil was “baited” out of the park, with hunters tying a dead animal to the back of the vehicle they were driving.

“I think it’s wonderful they’re lashing out at him”.

Conservation officials said the hunters who tried to destroy that collar when they beheaded and skinned the lion.

“I deeply ¬regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion”.

“He needs to be extradited, charged, and, preferably, hanged”, Ingrid Newkirk, president of animal rights group Peta US, said in a statement.

Palmer reportedly shot Cecil with a crossbow, then followed the injured lion for 40 hours before finishing him off with a gun. He also said that he has not been contacted by any officials in Zimbabwe or the U.S. but he would cooperate with any investigation. Nearby was a sign with a darker message for the dentist who said he killed the cat: “ROT IN HELL”.

Palmer, a dentist living in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, said in a statement that he was unaware the lion was protected, relying on local guides to ensure a legal hunt.

Local hunter Theo Bronkhorst and private game park owner Honest Ndlovu, who assisted Palmer, were escorted into the courthouse in Hwange by detectives.

Protestors began to gather outside Palmer’s dentistry practice, River Bluff Dental, in Bloomington, Minn., on Wednesday. If convicted he faces up to 15 years in prison. Even though that question from Kimmel seems like a legitimate question to many people, Taylor said there is legal, scientific hunting.

He also said that attempts to compare hunting with “nonlethal” tourism, such as wildlife watching, places “the revenue from hunting in Africa in the millions, and revenue from nonlethal tourism in the billions”.

Palmer, who has been in hiding ever since word came out that he was the man behind the killing, released a statement regarding the events.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in October 2014 proposed placing the African lion under protections from the Endangered Species Act, which would make it more hard for Americans to conduct licensed hunts and set up a system of permits for importing trophies from lion hunts. Palmer was sentenced to one year probation fined $2,938.

Cecil is believed to have been killed July 1 and his carcass discovered days later.

On his late night show, Jimmy Kimmel got choked up for a moment while talking about the lion’s killing and urged his viewers to do something positive by contributing to a wildlife preservation fund.