Passage: Cecil the Lion
It happened this past week ... a world-wide uproar over the recent killing of Cecil the Lion.
Cecil was 13 years old, a huge, black-maned lion, and a star attraction at a national park in Zimbabwe.
A star, that is, until early July, when Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer (with the help of two local hunting guides) used food to lure Cecil outside the protection of the park, where the lion was hunted down and killed.
- Lion hunter's guide: Hunt went "wrong from the beginning" ("CBS This Morning")
- American accused of killing African lion convicted in '06 bear hunt
- Safari Club takes action against hunter after Cecil the lion killing
Faced with angry headlines at home and abroad, Palmer has gone into hiding. He's issued a statement saying he had believed the hunt was legal.
Unappeased, protesters have left stuffed animals outside Palmer's currently-closed dental office -- while officials in Zimbabwe are calling for his extradition to face criminal charges, as the two local hunting guides already do.
- Betty White on Cecil killer: "You don't want to hear some of the things I want to do to that man"
- Demonstrators protest Minnesota dentist who killed protected lion ("CBS Evening News")
- Thousands petition White House to extradite Cecil's killer
- Hunters in court over Cecil the lion's death ("CBS This Morning")
- Zimbabwe trying to get U.S. trophy hunter extradited ("CBS This Morning")
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is investigating as well, and that it was contacted late in the week by a representative of Walter Palmer.
As of late Friday, the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University, the British conservation group that had been tracking Cecil with as GPS collar for years, had received nearly half a million dollars in contributions.
All of which, of course, comes too late for Cecil ... and at a very late hour for all African lions, whose numbers have dropped from an estimated 75,000 in 1980 to fewer than half that today.