In retrospect, this advertisement for his practice is telling.
He did get a permit though. Probably not a great idea to give out lion killing permits.
If you don't give out permits to kill lions, only outlaws will kill lions.
Yeah, but bribing public officials in other countries is against US law. US companies working overseas get in trouble for this sometimes.
You know, I want to be on the side that disapproves of the excessiveness of these explosive public shaming episodes. But with a lot of recent examples, I just can't. I mean, I don't actually want this guy or his family to come to physical harm, but I do kind of want his life seriously derailed, for his children to be ashamed of him, for his wife to resent him for the impact his selfishness had on their lives. Similarly, I would actually feel pretty okay if Gawker went away and if Jordan Sargent felt "traumatised" (in Denton's word) by the backlash; he's young, he might have time for it to make him a better person.
When it was a dumbass PR exec (or whatever she was) making a tasteless joke about AIDS, I could find it in myself to regret that a (terrible) joke could cost someone their job. But the moral unambiguity of cases like this just brings out the witch-burner in me. I am sorry to say.
I know a guy who can get you a good deal on a witch-burning permit. No questions asked.
5: Yeah, for some reason politicians get all protectionist when it comes to bribery.
On this particular dude, I'm kind of with Swopie. It feels like [since the dawn of time] there's been no recourse when rich shitheads destroy public goods because they can afford to. There are still plenty of rich shitheads doing things that don't go viral, but I'm not bothered by this guy being the asshole du jour.
3 I doubt a permit allows you to bait park animals to come out of the park.
I'm far from convinced this guy didn't know full well he was basically poaching (which is why everyone freaked out when they saw the radio tag), so I don't see anything wrong with the US extraditing him to stand trial in Zimbabwe. Poachers are scum.
I am a bit worried about the reaction to it, though, which seems to me to have less to do with caring about poaching/conservation/etc., and a lot more to do with people who think any kind of hunting is a horrific moral wrong, or at least if it's hunting something really charismatic that lives in a foreign (usually African) country. I mean, Rebecca Francis got basically the same reaction as he's getting for what, as far as I can tell, was pretty innocuous.
Hunting by foreign tourists seems like the exact type of area where a country has to be able to say "ignorance that you were breaking the law / having others break the law for you is no excuse" to enforce anything at all.
10:Yeah, the guy wanted Cecil because he was Cecil
I like and value animals more than people, and far more than rich fucks.
I have no problems with anything that happens to this fuck, anything without limit. I will cheer any story.
His wife accompanied him on the trip.
As long as she didn't make him dance.
I want to repeat that, and explore the implications.
This dentist killed Cecil because he was Cecil, and mount the head in his den surrounded by newspaper and magazine stories about "Cecil the world famous lion, admired and beloved by millions." And he will look at it over a snifter, and laugh. At us.
This isn't mere poaching, and not an accidental or collateral destruction of a common good.
This was a statement, a global insult. Dentist said:"You love it? Really admire and love it? Okay then. I'm gonna kill it and mount it on my wall...because you love it and can't protect it from the likes of me."
Part of the problem here is that dentists are too damned rich.
Are African lions endangered? I too am trying not to disapprove of this guy simply because he takes joy in killing magnificent things in the most (or one of the most, with bow and arrow) manly ways possible, but there's a big difference between shooting, say, a rabbit or a hedgehog in your back yard with bow 'n' arrow, and killing endangered animals.
Well, yes, he's an asshole, but it's not necessarily that he hates or doesn't recognises what's good and noble. He recognises it and pays it the highest tribute he knows, namely acquiring it for his sole use whatever the cost. I mean *maybe* he's a cackling sadist, but much more likely he's just out there on the spectrum of idiots who think that the way to connect with the wild is to snort rhino horn or train dolphins or raise tigers in your back yard or keep tamarins as pets or whatever. This is how stupid people value things, by grabbing and destroying them.
I read that as "train dolphins to raise tigers in your back yard," and I was totally transfixed.
My notion is that the figure of the trophy hunter, at least in this country, owes a lot to the mystique of Theodore Roosevelt. I don't know about now, but when I was growing up the obvious appeal of his lifestyle to boys was exploited in books and pictures. In fact he was considered grotesque and immature by many of his own contemporaries, including his political allies.
Have you ever seen a positive portrayal of such a figure? Every example I can think of: tv, movies, or books, is the opposite. In Hemingway's telling the rich American in Africa, with his wife to shoot a lion is a contemptible figure.
But guys like our shooter seem impervious to all this disdain, unreachable.
Threatened but recently recommended to be moved to endangered.
I bet it was a compound bow, what a wuss.
21- other thread.
Let alone his disgusting conduct toward supplicant Greece.
It feels like [since the dawn of time] there's been no recourse when rich shitheads destroy public goods because they can afford to
OH, I DON'T KNOW IF I'D SAY THAT, EXACTLY.
Part of the problem here is that dentists are too damned rich.
Maybe cut that richness with some bright citrus? And a simple green salad?
17: The US Fish and Wildlife Service currently lists the African lion as "threatened" rather than "endangered," but the FWS is kind of notoriously conservative in this regard (so, for that matter, are the other major endangered species lists, which tend to hold back on the number of species that end up listed as endangered or critically endangered because of the limitations that are (theoretically) placed on what industry can or can't do around their habitats). If we wanted to take the notion of endangered species seriously, probably all African megafauna are endangered at this point - which is a miserable state of affairs, but that's where we're at. There's also a larger question of the utility of trying to single out individual species for protection rather than whole ecosystems, an approach would make more sense from an ecological perspective, but which would have far more radical implications politically than any modern government would want to touch.
17: threatened, not endangered, a distinction that makes the kill less prosecutable. Slate says the US can still prosecute him for bribery though.
Minnesota Lefty Otherplace could not be more incensed about this. I mean, people are still mostly posting about police killings, but the dead lion is a close second.
Apparently there's some kind of hot blonde anti-poacher vigilante woman who's making quite a splash right now. Prob. le. matic.
Papa says "If you see it in Slate, it's so."
Is there any evidence that Palmer actually bribed anyone? Paying a bunch of money for a hunting permit may be functionally equivalent, but if it's legal it's not literal bribery.
31: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus -- and here's why you should put concertina wire around your chimney on Christmas Eve.
32: The government newspaper says the nationals involved in the hunt are appearing in court on poaching charges, and quotes an official statement saying they had neither hunting permits nor a hunting quota for the animal.
Of course if these are the laws they may well be selectively enforced, and Palmer may have been relying on understandings anyone would have, but I'd think a functional conservation system would reasonably ban luring protected animals out of parks.
I have no doubt that the guides and land owner at least are guilty of poaching under Zimbabwean law, and Palmer may well have some liability and vulnerability to extradition on that count as well. The Slate piece is really focused on bribery, though, presumably because this is the easiest angle for either trying Palmer in the US or extraditing him. If he paid the guides for a hunt that they didn't actually have permits for, I can see how that could maybe be construed as bribery, but it's a stretch.
Hunting of wildlife adjacent to park boundaries isn't just an issue in Zimbabwe, btw.
Have you ever seen a positive portrayal of such a figure? Every example I can think of: tv, movies, or books, is the opposite.
Well, the OP mentions one.
If he paid the guides for a hunt that they didn't actually have permits for, I can see how that could maybe be construed as bribery, but it's a stretch.
IIRC the relevant law is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (possibly the most inadvertently Victorian sounding law to be passed in the last half century; it might as well be called the Suppression of Unseemly Foreignness Act) which makes it an offence for a US citizen to bribe (or cause to be bribed) a foreign government official. The guides may count as foreign officials since the FCPA has a fairly wide definition including anyone working for an enterprise owned or managed by the government (which might well include national parks). Or if the guides then went on to bribe some local official, that would probably count under the FCPA as well. But if the guides are completely private individuals, and there's no malfeasance of any government official, I think he might be in the clear at least as far as FCPA is concerned.
37: the Predator took trophies, but it was definitely the better one out of the two in "Alien vs. Predator".
Someone just told me Cecil the Lion was named for Cecil Rhodes. This is like Go Set a Watchman!
This is reminds me that I missed my dental appointment this last time.
Freedman are supposed to be adapted to it.
It seems hard to believe that there was zero collusion with some public official or other around this conspiracy. How direct would the causal chain have to be to prove an FCPA violation? If you give someone fifty grand for the chance to kill a lion, no questions asked, and they make sure to spread the wealth around so that the game wardens are indisposed at the right time, would that constitute causing officials to be bribed? It seems like a case that would be vulnerable to any number of technicalities interfering with getting a conviction.
Someone just told me Cecil the Lion was named for Cecil Rhodes.
Does that make shooting it OK? Or only if the dentist who shoots it is African? Or went to Cambridge?
45: Lizardbreath, can we have an exception to the NO PSEUD CHANGES ukase to rename him Barry Fremen?
It seems hard to believe that there was zero collusion with some public official or other around this conspiracy.
Natilo is thinking "funny, Palmer doesn't sound like a Jewish name..."
Sure, I hope the guy's life is ruined, but to me the most infuriating part of this story is that if the lion this asshole paid $50,000 to go to Zimbabwe and murder had not by fluke been a "famous" lion, none of us would ever have have heard of him. As usual, the real crime is what's legal.
(It goes without saying that I don't buy 15--there's no reason to think (and strong reason to doubt) that the hunter was deliberately targeting Cecil.)
I agree with 49.1. He was hunting for a trophy, not food. And everybody knows Cecil B. DeMille.
I think you mean C. C. DeVille.
49.2:Cecil
African wildlife expert Dex Kotze says it is impossible that Palmer's hunting team didn't know it was Cecil."I mean a black mane lion like that you can see from afar and even on a hunt. You are definitely going to identify that this -- hang on this is a collared lion and it is Cecil. Because all the conservationists and wildlife industry in that area would have been very familiar with that lion Cecil," Kotze told CBS News' Debora Patta.
In Zimbabwe Debora Patta reached Brent Stapelkamp. He's part of the Oxford scientific team that has collared and tracked Cecil.
He's come in here to shoot a lion, a national emblem and he's been caught. So I would hope he gets everything that justice throws at him," Stapelkamp said.
It goes without saying that you would believe the evil fuck who has been convicted of lying about his hunts over the scientists and game wardens whose responsibility is to protect animals. Absolutely predictable.
If you want "reason to think..."
a) there are lots of other places in East Africa to hunt lions
b) there are lots of other lions to hunt on/off that game preserve
c) Cecil was slowly and carefully lured off the reserve onto private property with a string of fresh bait, in other words, they had hours to watch, observe, and examine the lion. Almost certainly targeted during daylight.
d) the identifying collar was immediately removed after the lion was finally killed
e) also, if anybody thinks this brave bow hunter didn't have guides with big guns beside him at all times, think again. Also the arrow didn't kill Cecil, they had to track and follow him to finish him off. Who know how badly he was hurt, but certainly another opportunity to identify a well-known animal.
I thought that was the way bow hunting works as far as the tracking and finishing off. At least for deer, which people don't kill nearly enough of around here, an arrow won't drop them. The animal bleeds out over time.
Trying to preempt even more desperate defenses of the evil fuck, if you want to imagine the guides knew it was Cecil but not dentist Palmer, then you have to presume the guides, who would certainly have future business in mind, would intentionally get an American client in a literal world of shit for no particular good reason.
But I have to assume urple, who would never use phrases like "no reason to believe" without a lot of research into a large number of readily available articles and commentary, understood all this when he made his comment.
38: Don't think FCPA applies here--it covers bribes made to obtain or retain business, not bribes to foreign officials in general. But there's apparently another statute I don't know anything about (the Travel Act) that people who ought to know say could cover the kind of bribe alleged here.
More No Reasons to Believe that Palmer knew it was Cecil
665 lion carcasses last year exported from at least 7 countries in Africa...making the odds, even given so many other "no reasons," that Palmer would accidentally get Cecil pretty damn low.
Cecil took 40 hours to die, wandering wounded and bleeding.
Palmer took much less than 24 hours after he got his lion head and hide to fly the fuck out of Africa, like he absolutely knew he had done nothing wrong.
Of course everyone understands what is going to happen to Cecil's pride.
The beta male will not be able to fight off encroaching alpha males and will be driven off to starve.
The 5-6 young cubs will be killed by the new alpha.
The lionesses will be raped and impregnated.
Palmer actually killed an entire pride of lions, including baby lions.
Urple wants to defend this guy.
The lionesses will be raped and impregnated.
bob, that's enough.
48: Hey, at least I've got the courage of my convictions there, Horst Wessel.
59:Hey, what, that is what happens when new alpha males take over a pride. How would you like me to phrase it, more romantically?
#WalterPalmer has multiple postings of his address and phone number
Sharon Osbourne (still married to Ozzie?), umm the reality show was watched here, but not by me:"I hope that #WalterPalmer loses his home, his practice, and his money..."
It's a start.
New alphas kill the cubs to put the females into estrus.
And ok I am having, but Cecil and 49.2 really upset me.
I understand that 49.2, 59, and 61 were just mild forms of Display
"These behaviors often include ritualized movement ("dances"), vocalizations, mechanical sound production, or displays of beauty, strength, or agonistic ability"
Usually I just read the bullshit, but I don't appreciate the displays when they are at my expense, no matter how much it amuses and flatters the laydeeez.
Wouldn't it be weird if Rhoda was actually a deep satire on the political situation in Rhodesia?
62 - I'm not sure it's reasonable to apply terms like 'raped' to other species like that. Why exactly would you think that the new alpha wouldn't have consent when the other one did - loving and kind relationships built on a foundation of mutual trust? They're lions, and they act like them.
I understand that 49.2, 59, and 61 were just mild forms of Display
You're projecting, amigo.
Bob is usually a Big Picture guy, but in this case, it's urple who captures the larger principle ...
As usual, the real crime is what's legal.
... while bob frets about labradoodles.
Jesus. I work with people who are younger than The Simpsons.
17, 22, etc.
From what I've heard the debate about lions has a lot to do with the fact that they aren't necessarily in much danger in a few specific areas*, and in genuine danger in all the other ones. So if you average it out it looks one way, but if you look at it in terms of number-of-ecosystems it's entirely different.
I doubt he actually went after Cecil specifically. Zimbabwe is one of the only places to give out lion hunting licenses (responsibly), so he'd have a reason to go there above somewhere else. And while a black mane is distinctive it's also characteristic of the local lion populations so it's not necessarily something that would pick out Cecil immediately.** (Also unless the tracking collar was like a hiking backpack I think it's reasonable to assume they couldn't see it on a lion moving around a ways off in the bush, possibly at night - if they put it on his neck especially, well, male lions tend to have a lot of hair right there...)
*Including, ironically, Zimbabwe and a lot of the rest of Southern Africa, which seems to have done a better job of conservation than most places. I assume it's because a sizeable (majority?) number of really charismatic wildlife lives in that exact region, and certainly most of the megafauna. So they have a very strong reason to keep things working and enough political stability to do it.
**The professional hunter might have, though, on grounds of 'easier to lure'.
They're lions, and they act like them.
On my bad days, I think you could substitute "humans" for "lions" and be just as correct.
The people who put the taxidermy animals in the local natural history museum didn't try to substitute humans for lions. All the humans are completely fake, even the one guy being attacked by lions.
That attacking lion diorama thing was my FAVORITE when I was a kid. Also I really think you could do some awesome photo shoots with real people and all those taxidermy + other stuff scenes. I love all those crazy guys and hope they are lovingly maintained for all posterity.
I like to think that they used to have about actual taxidermy-human but in the 80s, somebody found a copy of "Orientalism" and demanded they bury the dead Bedouin guy.
I love the dioramas in our local natural history museum, but after Googling, "Arab Courier Attacked by Lions" is my new favorite.
Though (because?) the name puts me in mind of this.
74 Holy shit that's amazing. I must see this. Or at the very least, I must own the snow globe.
They didn't even try to have the walrus eating anybody.
Friends of ours have the snow globe and we're so jealous.
Heh, NY had the tableau but sold it to Pittsburgh. It was too dramatic for the New Yorkers.
Oh, no wonder that description sounded familiar. It's an intense piece, even if it has doubtful scientific value.
bob I was not trying to argue with you, I just thought your theory was crazy and possibly intentionally unseriously provocative. Let me rephrase: I have not seen good evidence that the bad man was trying to shoot Cecil. I think he just want to shoot big lion. Maybe I wrong.
OP/21: Isn't TR exactly an example of glorification? He seems increasingly likely held up as an example of a Great President. it seems like there's plenty of *nonfiction* glorifying this behavior.
And isn't this tension basically the subplot of The Queen? "Phillip's" reaction to the sighting of the n-point buck is to immediately plan on stalking it, and implementing this, crazily enough, is how he consoles his grandsons about the death of their mother, Princess *Diana* (whom he clearly hates), killed while being chased by paparazzi. Both his desire to stalk and hunt the buck and his idea that it will be good for the young princes is accepted as obvious and true by "Elizabeth" and "the Queen Mother." it is so much the default assumption that this is what must be done that when "Elizabeth" sees the Buck she is secretive and ashamed/afraid about trying to save it, hides her sadness on being informed of its demise, and even while seeing its carcass and mourning it, seems to feel obligated to convey her congratulations to the shooter (an American tourist, if I recall).Her external displays of approving of hunting as *the* way to be in nature are the most consistent with how she is portrayed in real life, outside the movie, as much nonfiction as any "journalistic" piece on the Royals can be, while her interior conflict and desire to save the deer are all part of the fictional narrative in the movie.
I thought you were supposed to let royalty and children shoot first.
bob I was not trying to argue with you, I just thought your theory was crazy and possibly intentionally unseriously provocative
Of course not, I understand you were/are just trying to take a crowd-sanctioned cheapshot in order to entertain
I have not seen good evidence that the bad man was trying to shoot Cecil.
I understand that I can falsify and render entire sections of the Internet simply by linking to them, but I have provided plenty of evidence and arguments above, apparently none of any "good" including testimony from experts onsite (53)
To continue:
1) Palmer is a trophy hunter who hangs out and is competitive within the world of trophy hunters. When the TH's visit Palmer's trophy room, what could make him and his trophy special? Remember, there are two lions killed in Africa every single day, the plurality apparently by Americans.
An older black-maned lion trophy would be special enough for Palmer, enhanced with great accompanying pictures and especially video of the particular lion in the wild.
But in researching on the Net lions and lion hunts before planning and going on the trip, and especially researching older black-maned lions, do you think Walter Palmer would not encounter the stories of one of the rare black-maneds, Cecil?
And assuming he knew of Cecil before he left, do you still think it is a coincidence that Palmer chose the hunting site immediately adjacent to Cecil's territory?
There are other hunting sites on other sides of that park.
2) WaPo which I will force to close shop by linking to it, discusses the prices of lion-hunting safaris at some length. $29k, $30k
Walter Palmer by reports and that article paid ($54,000) at the very top end of the range for lion trophies. I consider this evidence that Walter Palmer contracted for the rarest of trophies, an older larger black-maned lion. Saying this, see above, you google "black-maned lion", you will find Cecil.
When Palmer says he never heard of Cecil before the kill, he lies.
But really, apparently the only "good" evidence urple will accept is a confession, videotape or explicit documentation.
But it never was about facts or argument or right and wrong. It was about the cheapshot, and crazy Bob. And that is why I responded.
More "non-evidence"
Apparently this particular private site did not have an annual license to hunt lion.
I repeat, this place did not have a lion-hunting permit for 2015.
So why the fuck did Palmer (and Theo Bronkhurst, the guide) choose to hunt off this private site, of the many available?
Bronkhurst is facing 15 years.
Well, that was fast... someone has already written a book about this guy.
If the copy editing is better than you see in a university press book, don't tell AWB.