Cecil (c. 2002 – 2 July 2015) was a male African lion (Panthera leo leo) who lived primarily in the Hwange National Park in Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe. He was being studied and tracked by a research team of the University of Oxford as part of a long-term study. On the night of 1 July 2015, Cecil was wounded with an arrow by Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game trophy hunter, then tracked and killed with a compound bow the following morning, between 10 and 12 hours later. Cecil was 13 years old when killed. Palmer had purchased a hunting permit and was not charged legally with any crime; authorities in Zimbabwe have said he is still free to visit the country as a tourist, but not as a hunter. Two Zimbabweans (the hunting guide and the owner of the farm where the hunt took place) were briefly arrested, but the charges were eventually dismissed by courts. The killing was first reported by South African wildlife investigative reporter Adam Cruise writing for Conservation Action Trust. It resulted in international media attention and caused outrage among animal conservationists, criticism by politicians and celebrities, and a strong denunciation of Palmer. Five months after the killing of Cecil, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added lions in India and West and Central Africa to the endangered species list, making it more difficult for United States citizens to kill them legally on safaris. Wayne Pacelle, then President of the HSUS, argued that Cecil had "changed the atmospherics on the issue of trophy hunting around the world", adding, "I think it gave less wiggle room to regulators." Because of the high level of media attention and condemnation surrounding the killing of Cecil, significantly fewer hunters came to Zimbabwe in the months that followed. This led to the country suffering financial losses and a lion overpopulation in the Bubye Valley Conservancy.
Background Cecil was named after the British businessman, politician and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, the namesake also of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Another lion thought to be Cecil's brother was noticed in Hwange National Park in 2008. During 2009, the two lions encountered an established pride, which resulted in a fight in which Cecil's brother was killed, and both Cecil and the pride leader were seriously wounded; the previous leader was subsequently mercy-killed by park rangers because of the wounds sustained during the fight with Cecil. Cecil retreated to another part of the park where he eventually established his own pride with as many as 22 members. During 2013, Cecil was forced out from the area by two young male lions and into the eastern border of the park. There, he created a coalition with another male lion named Jericho to establish two prides that consisted of Cecil, Jericho, half a dozen females and up to a dozen cubs sired by either Cecil or Jericho. The lions in the park, including Cecil, have been studied by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford as part of a scientific project that has run since 1999, and his movements had been followed since 2008. Of the 62 lions tagged during the study period, 34 have died, including 24 through sport hunting. Of adult male lions that were tagged inside the park, 72% were killed through sport hunting on areas near the park. During 2013, 49 hunted lion carcasses were exported from Zimbabwe as trophies; the 2005–2008 Zimbabwe hunt "off-take" (licensed kills) average was 42 lions per year. The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) found that the African lion population had decreased by forty-three percent from 1997 to 2017. The African Lion now has a conservation status of "vulnerable" with humans being its only co-predator. Cecil was identifiable by his black-fringed mane and a GPS tracking collar, and was Hwange Park's main attraction. One of the researchers on the project suggested that Cecil had become so popular because he was accustomed to people, allowing vehicles to approach sometimes as close as 10 metres (11 yd), making it easy for tourists and researchers to photograph and observe him. According to Alex Magaisa, an advisor to Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Cecil was known only to a segment of society;, some sources claimed 99.99 percent of Zimbabweans had never heard of Cecil.
Death During June 2015, Walter J. Palmer, an American dentist and recreational game hunter, reportedly paid US$50,000 to a Zimbabwean professional hunter-guide, Theo Bronkhorst, to enable him to kill a lion. In the late afternoon of 1 July, Bronkhorst and wildlife tracker Cornelius Ncube built a hunting blind in Atoinette Farm, a private property owned by Honest Ndlovu just across a railway track from the park. Between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., Palmer shot from concealment and critically wounded Cecil with an arrow from his compound bow. The hunters tracked Cecil and killed him with a second arrow the next morning (about 10 to 12 hours later) at a location less than 250 metres (270 yd) from the initial shot. Cecil's body was then skinned and his head was removed. When the lion's headless skeleton, already scavenged by vultures, was eventually found by park investigators, his tracking collar was also missing and later found dumped kilometers away. The hunt took place outside the protected Hwange National Park, but within the lion's normal home range. Biologist Andrew Loveridge alleged that Palmer's companions (Bronkhorst and Ncube) dragged the carcass of an African elephant killed earlier in the week to roughly 300 metres (330 yd) from the park to bait Cecil out of the protected area.
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