Something good has come out of the tragic death of Cecil the Lion, a beloved 13-year-old lion at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park who was lured out of a protected area by Theo Bronkhorst and Honest Trymore Ndlovu, shot with an arrow by American dentist Walter Palmer, then tracked for forty agonizing hours before they shot him. Cecil’s six newborn cubs will likely die without a father in the wild. Palmer — who’s previously been convicted of killing a bear outside a permitted area — reportedly paid $50,000 for the illegal hunt, which is a similar amount of money to what even a single nearby lodge would make in only five days ($9,800 per day) of tourist trips to take photographs of Cecil the Lion, if he were still alive. In other words, it’s hard to see how anything good could come out of this cruelty.
Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel lambasted Palmer and made a heartfelt plea for his viewers to donate to Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit — who were studying Cecil via a GPS collar — in order to “show the world that not all Americans are like this jackhole.”
The charity’s director David McDonald confirmed to The Wrap the plea brought 2,600 donations in the first 24 hours, with the amount of money raised totaling more than $150,000 and growing. “The email deluge is overwhelming us, we thank you sincerely,” McDonald said.
Let Cecil’s life and death remind us positivity can come from tragedy and, yes, not everyone is like “that jackhole.”
(Via The Wrap)
