Hwange National Park<\/a> after being lured out of a protected area and into a nearby hunting zone with the use of bait.\n <\/p>\n\n After Blondie\u2019s killing became a new rallying cry for those opposed to hunting, a spokesperson for Zimbabwe\u2019s National Parks told The Associated Press on Thursday that the hunt was legal and the hunter had the necessary permits. Zimbabwe allows up to 100 lions to be hunted a year. Trophy hunters, who are usually foreign tourists, pay tens of thousands of dollars to kill a lion and take the head or skin as a trophy.\n <\/p>\n
\n Africa Geographic CEO Simon Espley said Blondie\u2019s killing made \u201ca mockery of the ethics\u201d trophy hunters claim to prescribe to because he wore a clearly visible research collar and was a breeding male in his prime. Hunters say they only target ageing, non-breeding lions.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThat Blondie\u2019s prominent collar did not prevent him from being offered to a hunting client confirms the stark reality that no lion is safe from trophy hunting guns,\u201d Espley said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hunting lions is fiercely divisive, even among conservationists. Some say if it is well managed it raises money that can be put back into conservation. Others want killing wildlife for sport to be banned outright.\n <\/p>\n
\n Some countries in Africa like Kenya have commercial hunting bans, others like Zimbabwe and South Africa allow it. Botswana lifted a ban on hunting six years ago.\n <\/p>\n
\n Tinashe Farawo, the spokesperson for the Zimbabwe parks agency, said money from hunting is crucial to support the southern African nation\u2019s underfunded conservation efforts. He defended the hunt and said they often happen at night, meaning the collar on Blondie may not have been visible.\n <\/p>\n
\n He said he had no information on Blondie being lured out of the park with bait \u2014 which is usually a dead animal \u2014 but there \u201cis nothing unethical or illegal about that for anyone who knows how lions are hunted. This is how people hunt.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOur rangers were present. All paperwork was in order. Collars are for research purposes, but they don\u2019t make the animal immune to hunting,\u201d Farawo said. He declined to name the hunter.\n <\/p>\n
\n Cecil\u2019s killing in 2015 unleashed furious anger against Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist and trophy hunter who lured the lion out of the same national park in Zimbabwe and shot him with a bow before tracking him for hours and finally killing him. Cecil, whose head and skin were cut off and taken for trophies, was also involved in a research project by Oxford University.\n <\/p>\n
\n Zimbabwe authorities initially said they would seek to extradite Palmer over the hunt, although that didn\u2019t happen, while a hunting guide who helped him was arrested, only for charges to be dropped.\n <\/p>\n
\n Zimbabwe\u2019s national parks agency says the country makes about $20 million a year from trophy hunting, with a single hunter spending an average of $100,000 per hunt \u2014 which includes accommodation and hiring vehicles and local trackers.\n <\/p>\n
\n Zimbabwe is home to approximately 1,500 wild lions, with around one-third of them living in the vast Hwange National Park. Across Africa, the wild lion population is estimated at around 20,000. However, their numbers are decreasing due to habitat loss and human conflict. Lions, one of Africa\u2019s most iconic species, are currently listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link HARARE, Zimbabwe AP \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 The killing of a collared lion involved in a research…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":111523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-111522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114956143444519725","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}