Cecil the lion: Zimbabwe turns up heat as Internet tries to cool down

Zimbabwe is raising the temperature in the international furor over Cecil the lion’s death, calling for the U.S. dentist who shot him – whom it denounced as a “foreign poacher” – to be extradited and “made accountable.”

Authorities at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are trying to track down Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer – and have so far been unsuccessful – as global outrage over the famous lion’s death continues to grow. But there has also been some backlash to the outrage, and for the British conservationists who were monitoring Cecil, there has also been a silver lining – an influx of donations for their struggling research project.

(Watch: Hunter has become the hunted)

---

Zimbabwe’s push

In Harare’s first official comments since Cecil’s killing grabbed world headlines this week, Environment Minister Oppah Muchinguri said Friday that the Prosecutor-General had already started the process to extradite Mr. Palmer. “The illegal killing was deliberate,” Ms. Muchinguri, a senior member of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party, told a news conference, adding that Mr. Palmer’s use of a bow and arrow to kill the lion – which is said to have been lured out of the national park with bait before being shot – contravened Zimbabwean hunting regulations.

Under a 1998 treaty between the United States and Zimbabwe, a person can be extradited if he is accused of an offence that carries more than a year in prison. In Zimbabwe, the illegal killing of a lion is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as a mandatory fine of $20,000.

Lawyer Alec Muchadehama told Reuters that no American had been extradited to Zimbabwe since the treaty was signed, adding that Harare faced legal and political hurdles. First, Harare has to apply to U.S. courts and satisfy them that Mr. Palmer committed an offence, and that he would be jailed for more than one year if convicted.

“They [U.S. courts] may actually doubt the competence of the judiciary here to try him in an objective manner, particularly given these prejudicial pronouncements that the politicians are already making,” Mr. Muchadehama said.

The White House said Thursday that it will review a public petition to extradite Mr. Palmer, which has exceeded the required 100,000 signatures. The U.S. embassy in Harare said it did not comment on extradition matters as a matter of policy.

---

America’s response

Amid the debate over whether to extradite Mr. Palmer, U.S. authorities are reportedly making an investigation of their own. The shooting is being investigated by the Fish and Wildlife Service to see if it was part of a conspiracy to violate U.S. laws against illegal wildlife trading, a source close to the case told Reuters on Thursday.

Mr. Palmer, 55, has admitted killing the 13-year-old predator, which was was fitted with a GPS collar as part of an Oxford University study, but he said in a statement that he had hired professional guides and believed that all the necessary hunting permits were in order. He has not been sighted since his identity was revealed this week by Zimbabwean conservationists.

---

A surge of donations

There is some good that has emerged from the killing of Cecil: Global outrage has inspired a burst of giving.

The British conservation group that was tracking Cecil and other lions using GPS-fitted electronic collars is now saying it can continue its monitoring project. Prior to the Cecil saga, the WildCru – the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit – said it had been discussing winding down its poaching-control project because funding was drying up.

The group said it was overwhelmed and inspired by the support. “So far more than £230,000 [$467,310] has been raised, enough to fund the research for at least 18 months, and gifts are continuing to come in,” a spokeswoman said in an interview with The Independent newspaper.

The group, which studies lions in the wild by camping in remote parts of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park and tracking the movements of more than 100 lions using 4x4 vehicles and light aircraft, believes that understanding how lions move across vast areas can help researchers understand how lions can come in to conflict with people in places where man and beast are competing for space and resources.

Over the past 50 years, according to the group, the geographic range of the African lion has shrunk by 80 per cent.

The group’s website and donation link have been widely shared and the donation page has been so inundated with people trying to donate that it has crashed.

Earlier this week, late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel – in a departure from his usual laugh-filled monologue – shared the story of Cecil and became emotional as he encouraged his audience to visit the group’s site and make a donation.

---

Tempering the outrage

Though Cecil’s death has sparked global outrage, others have now started challenging the scale and proportionality of it.

Vox argues that eating chickens is morally worse than killing a lion and points to deplorable conditions in which chicken are kept — 20,000 to a single shed, with one square feet of moving space for each animal. “Another common practice is to keep these sheds dimly lit for 20 hours each day to keep the birds awake and eating constantly,” the article states, quoting the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The Cecil story is also intersecting with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, with writers and social-media users wondering aloud why the same outpouring of emotion is not given to the growing number of unarmed black Americans dying during encounters with police. “And while African lions may be endangered, isn’t it time we admit that here in the U.S., black lives are endangered, too?” writer David Ferguson asked on the website Raw Story.

British columnist Rupert Myers, writing in The Telegraph, wonders why the “outrage bus has parked up at the door of one man” – the U.S. dentist. “Until we stop fixating on the Cecils of this world, what hope do we have that Jimmy Kimmel might tear up in his call for viewers to donate to a charity for humans? If they really want our attention in the crowded media landscape, perhaps the migrants, the dispossessed, and those travelling the seas in search of peaceful shores should just carry kittens with them,” he wrote.

With a report from Reuters