During Wednesday's White House press briefing, Julia Edwards -- a reporter for the Reuters news service -- asked Press Secretary Josh Earnest if President Barack Obama would respond to the “growing outcry” over the killing of Cecil, a well-loved lion in a Zimbabwe park that was hunted down by Minnesota dentist Walter James Palmer.
“Is the White House or is President Obama aware of this killing,” she asked, “and what could the president do, on an executive level, to possibly keep U.S. trophy hunters from traveling to Africa and committing other killings?”
Also, she noted, a representative for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “said that they are looking into the incident, possibly working with Zimbabwe officials who have called to bring this person to justice.”
Earnest meekly replied:
I've seen the press reports on this. I don't have much for you. I have not spoken to the president about this.
As you point out, it has been widely covered in the news, and as we know, he's a voracious consumer of news, so it wouldn't surprise me that he's aware of it, but I don't have anything detailed to read out for you right now.
As if that wasn't bad enough, an article written for the Cable News Network by Don Melvin stated that Palmer paid two local men -- Honest Trymore Ndlovu and Theo Bronchorst -- $50,000 to lure the 13-year-old lion out of the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.
According to Johnny Rodrigues, head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, “Cecil's death was cruel.”
He stated that the men “went hunting at night with a spotlight, and they spotted Cecil. They tied a dead animal to their vehicle to lure Cecil out of the park, and they scented an area about half a kilometer from the park," or about 550 yards.
At first, the dentist “shot the lion with a bow and arrow, but that failed to kill it.” The lion was then tracked for 40 hours “and shot again with a gun before it was skinned and beheaded.”
A police report states that the guides Palmer hired were quickly arrested and charged with killing the animal illegally.
"The saddest part of all is that, now that Cecil is dead, the next lion in the hierarchy, Jericho, will most likely kill all Cecil's cubs so that he can insert his own bloodline into the females," Rodrigues said. "This is standard procedure for lions."
However, in an article for The Hill, Kevin Cirilli asserted that while killing the lion was terrible, Palmer was guilty of something even more horrific: donating money to Republican candidates for public office.
Federal Elections Commission (FEC) forms show Palmer, who lives in Eden Prairie, Minn., donated $5,000 to the Romney campaign in 2012.
The dentist also donated $250 to former Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) in 1990 and the same to Ramstad in 1992.
Nevertheless, Palmer has released a statement expressing his regret for killing the lion, which was wearing a collar used by researchers to track its movement and monitor the lion population. He has also said that he believed he was acting legally.
“I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt,” Palmer said. “I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, Edwards isn't the only member of the press to express outrage over the animal's death.
During CBS This Morning, co-anchor Gayle King commented: “The more you hear about it, the more upsetting it is.
“I heard somebody in South Africa describe it,” King noted. “It would be like in this country, if somebody shot Lassie, and then said: ‘We didn’t know that was Lassie.’”
Also expressing his fury was British columnist Piers Morgan, who called for “Big Human Hunting” -- without any guns, of course – to attack Palmer, whom he described as “a smirking, vile, callous assassin with no heart.”
Noting that the dentist “now faces a prison sentence,” Morgan declared that “captivity seems way too good for him.” So what was his solution?
I will sell tickets for $50,000 to anyone who wants to come with me and track down fat, greedy, selfish, murderous businessmen like Dr. Palmer in their natural habitat.
We’d lure him out with bait … and once lured, we would all take a bow and fire a few arrows into his limbs to render him incapable of movement.
Even more interesting is the fact that the TV networks covered the lion's death more in one day than they did the Planned Parenthood abortion scandal during two weeks.
