adminCECIL the lion was too old and shooting him was the right thing to do. This is the controversial view of the professional hunter at the centre of the storm that has angered animal lovers around the world. Boasting of 23 years of experience, Theo Bronkhorst said Cecil, the 13 year-old lion he hunted down for his American client last month, would not have had much longer to live. Cecil was a star attraction among tourists in Hwange, Zimbabwe’s largest national park.
“We are talking about a lion that was 13 years old. He was on his last legs and if an animal had to be shot, it was that aged lion,” Bronkhorst told Sunday Times in an interview in Bulawayo.
The owner of the family-owned Bushman Safaris, Bronkhorst defended the kill: “it would have been – in my view – wrong to have shot younger male, when this one was at the end of lifespan. So I believe that we did the right thing, but at no time did we know it was a famous lion called Cecil. We could just see that it was an old lion.”
The White House is to review a public petition to extradite Walter Palmer, the American client who paid about $50000 (R635 000) to shoot Cecil with a crossbow, paving the way for the dentist to be sent back to Africa to face charges.
The petition has exceeded 100 000 signatures and officials said it was now up to the US Justice Department to respond to the extradition order. Celebrities ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Cara Delevingne have expressed their revulsion at the hunt. Schwarzenegger posted an image on Instagram of himself in his hey-day with two of his bodybuilding trophies juxtaposed with a picture of a lion. “These are trophies. This is not,” he said, referring to the lion. — Sunday Times.
Online Reporter