Walter Palmer, the man who killed Cecil the lion, returns to his dental practice

[Sir Andy]

#kony2012 #cecil2015

So pretty much, bad things that happen in Africa become a rallying cry against tyranny for white adolescents for about a month.

Then it's back to Instagram.

[Every Pwny]

That's because lion hunting, when done PROPERLY, is actually beneficial to lions.

I don't like poachers. I support legal lion hunting.

It's a very, very important distinction, and the people that are against all hunting generally don't understand why hunting is useful and focus on "but teh animulzz!!".

Being against lion hunting doesn't mean you are against all hunting, it can be beneficial in culling the animal population when they get out of control. In NY deer become a huge nuisance with their fast growth in population, hunting season helps to reduce their numbers.

And yes, there's an entire group devoted to stopping lion hunts entirely, which sort of flies in the face of your point - lionwatch.org or something. All they do is post blog-posts and news papers about how bad hunting is and how sport hunters should be stopped because they're ruining everything.

A small group trying to stop lion hunting of the 2,000 remaining lions in kenya doesn't mean much in here in terms of the short term outrage people had about this incident. It was a pet lion that was killed, and people got mad for a bit, even madder when they found out the guy was an ass, and then forgot about it.

Again: this wasn't an issue because it was a hunted lion. It was an issue because it was a POACHED lion, that was lured from a protected area. It was not on the huntable table, at all, at any time, no matter what licenses were issued. There was zero way he would have been legally shot as things stood (hey, yeah, he could have wandered out a large amount on his own, or been relocated, or the park disbanded.. but none of those happened, or looked to happen).

A protected animal, part of a study to help preserve lions, was poached by a guy with more money than sense (seriously... don't even bother to check on your license, and accept a last-minute area change? get real.) because he couldn't be bothered to do it legally. Most people don't care about legal lion hunting, because they realize that it's legal and beneficial. This was neither.

It was more of an issue because it was a pet lion people liked, not really because it was poached, but because it had a name. As opposed to a nameless poached lion. It's doubtful any other poached lion would make headlines even if there was a face attached to the poacher. It was more of a story of a zoo lion getting killed by an ass, rather than any kind of greater issue. I wouldn't pretend this was any more than petty outrage while ignoring a bigger issue of a dwindling lion population.

[vetinari]

Except no. especially on this board, it was even, if not leaning toward my position, at best.

And yes, you will always have the crazies online. They're never the majority - PETA doesn't stand for all people who care about animal abuse, for good reason, and nobody tries to inflate them and claim it's useless to say anything because animals get abused anyway. And those that do are EQUALLY crazy as the people in PETA, just the other way.

I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment.

Being against legal trophy hunting isn't a "crazy" position, its the mainstream position. The vast majority of the population aren't educated about how legal hunting works and don't particularly care to do so. They see: endangered species + human killed it for fun = bad, and the thinking stops there.

Like I said, we've seen this before in australia, though in the case of the cricketer, people were throwing around death threats at both sides, and he ended up apologizing about how sorry he was that he went hunting.

[Mistame]

Good for him. The court of public opinion has no validity and people that seek out "social justice" by ruining reputations, etc, should be throat punched.