Experts say she used a sex scent to attract black-maned Cecil outside the safety of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, where he was killed weeks later by US dentist Walter Palmer.
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In his first public comments about the lion, Mugabe said Monday that Zimbabweans should protect their natural resources from foreign “vandals” who try to illegally acquire those resources.
“He is dead but yours to protect, and you failed to protect him”, he said, in a speech to mark a national holiday.
“There are vandals who come from all over”.
Zimbabwe lifted its ban on hunting lions, leopards and elephants less than 10 days after news of the killing of Cecil the lion caused an global outcry, media reports said. Beks Ndlovu, founder and chief executive of African Bush Camps, said: “I would agree we failed, the system failed, to protect Cecil”.
Zimbabwe’s government has previously been criticised for neglecting national parks and failing to tackle the scourge of poaching.
Brent Stapelkamp, who leads the Hwange lion project, says big game hunting of other species is essential to conserve wildlife areas, but lions are too rare to be killed for trophies. But last week the ban was scrapped, with exceptions in certain areas.
Zimbabwe hunter Theo Bronkhorst has been arrested and charged with failure to prevent the illegal li …
Africa’s wildlife is a highly saleable commodity in all its forms, and hunting is too valuable to many countries for it to stop.
He said: “Some communities depend on commercial hunting, and these people can not be punished because of the actions of a few individuals”.
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Mr Stapelkamp said no amount of money can act as compensation for losing such a creature, adding: “My personal feeling is lion hunting shouldn’t exist. It’s the 21st century”. “I still want a total ban, or a moratorium, on hunting endangered animals because they’re going to suffer”.
