Animals and human beings share an intriguing relationship that’s both capricious and consistent. We love particular animals as pets; some we love enough to consume filling a part of us, while others we prefer to hunt — as trophies that we can proudly show off.
My timeline(s) on social media was awash with memes on ‘how to shoot a lion’: Zimbabwe’s high-profile lion, Cecil, was shot by American dentist Walter James Palmer earlier this month. The lion lived in Hwange National Park, where hunting is illegal. Walter, with the help of two locals, lured Cecil to a farm, shot him, stalked him for 40 hours, shot him again, skinned the corpse and cut off Cecil’s head. And it all cost Walter, a measly $50,000.
There’s more to this than just big-game hunting: Africa’s lion population has declined 90 per cent in the last 40 years, due to inbreeding, poaching, disease and, naturally, trophy-hunting. Funnily enough, some conservation experts cite big-game hunting as a measure to preserve endangered species, as a whole . Apparently, the philosophy of common good applies to lions as well. Hunting for conservation sounds counterintuitive, and conservation essentially calls for a lot of funds. Which reinforces the idea that if you can afford it, the world is your hunting ground.
While Walter is being harangued (and possibly hunted) online — his defence being that he had “no idea that the lion was a known, local favourite” — his countryman Josh Newell faces charges for jumping a fence at a zoo to pet a few geriatric cougars: “cougars love me,” as he puts it. Walter, for now, has to live with the tag of the ‘most hated man on the Internet’, while Josh perhaps needs a dog or two to keep him company.
