By Kyle Swenson/‎Mar‎ ‎7‎, ‎2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/07/cecil-the-lio
n-suffered-incredible-cruelty-for-at-least-10-hours-new-book-says/>

Booze shook the secret loose from the hunting staff. They arrived thirsty at
the safari lodge in the Zimbabwe wilderness in July 2015. Their pockets were
fat with cash.

Drinks went down and they became chatty, talking about a huge lion killed
days earlier by a visiting trophy hunter. The lodge workers overhearing the
boasts immediately wondered if the hunters were talking about Cecil, the
12-year-old lion who prowled the Kalahari woodlands of the Hwange National
Park, according to a
<https://www.amazon.com/Lion-Hearted-Future-Africas-Iconic/dp/1682451208/ref
=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520409599&sr=1-1&keywords=andrew+loveridge> new
book by Oxford University researcher Andrew Loveridge.

It would prove to be the first clue in unraveling how Cecil was killed. The
big cat had not been seen since July 1. Jericho, the area’s other male lion,
had filled the recent nights with lonely, unanswered calls. The lodge
workers relayed what they’d heard to a National Parks ranger.

Cecil’s 2015 death created international controversy, with much of the
fervor knotting around
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/29/how-the-death
-of-cecil-the-lion-at-the-hands-of-american-walter-palmer-has-shed-light-on-
the-big-business-of-big-game/?utm_term=.989c4f039563> Walter Palmer, a
55-year-old Minnesota dentist and avid big game hunter. Palmer had
reportedly paid local hunters and guides $50,000 to bring down Cecil with a
bow-and-arrow on the Gwaai Conservancy, a private wildlife refuge bordering
the park. The volume of the uproar rose when it was reported no lion hunting
had been legally greenlit for the area.

Palmer later issued a public apology stating that he “had no idea that the
lion [he] took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a
study.” Although Palmer’s guide was initially charged for his part in
Cecil’s death, a Zimbabwe high court later dropped the proceedings.

Loveridge’s book, “Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future
of Africa’s Iconic Cats,” offers the first detailed account of Cecil’s last
hours, including new information on how the hunters lured the lion out of
the park to his death. The book, based on interviews with members of the
hunt and the analysis of Loveridge’s data, also purports corrects many of
the factual errors plaguing news coverage of the death.

“What I find most difficult about the whole incident is the apparent
callousness with which the hunters undertook this hunt,” Loveridge writes in
the book, which was excerpted this week in
<https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/wildlife-watch-cecil-trophy-hun
ting-andrew-loveridge/> National Geographic. “The lion was a commodity to be
collected, ‘taken’ in hunting parlance. Concern for the pain and suffering
of the animal never seems to have been a particular consideration.”

The book arrives as big game hunting again is a hot topic in the United
States. Under President Trump — whose sons are
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/03/06/trump-called-ele
phant-hunts-a-horror-show-his-administration-just-lifted-a-trophy-hunting-ba
n/?utm_term=.20b90dafd4dd> big game hunters — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service has quietly been rolling back restrictions on importing hunting
trophies from overseas. Beginning
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-trump-hunters-lion-trophi
es-20171120-story.html> in October, the agency began issuing new permits of
lion carcasses from Zimbabwe.

Palmer’s attorney was not immediately available for comment on Loveridge’s
book.

http://cdn.flipboard.com/washingtonpost.com/d467879b6d2bf2adfcebda0d4d6860a7
9ff00a83/original.jpg

Dentist Walter Palmer, arrives to his office in Bloomington, Minn., in 2015.
(Jim Mone-File/AP)

Loveridge studied Cecil for eight years, and the work was often beset by
loss. Since the research began at the park in 1999, 42 collared male lions
have been killed by trophy hunters, according to National Geographic.

“It’s hugely sad to lose a study animal that you are very very familiar
with, you spent a lot of time with,” he
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBRaGGwqbG0> told the BBC after Cecil’s
death. “You get very up close and personal with them. They all have
personalities, so it’s very distressing when they die, not only from
trophy-hunting but from other causes as well.”

According to the book, members of the research team began worrying about
Cecil on July 6, when they noticed the animals GPS collar had not
transmitted data since July 4. The collar had new batteries. A malfunction
was unlikely.

When the team heard rumors about a lion hunt, they hit the field, picking up
the information from the safari lodge. Eventually, the team tracked the
boastful hunters down to Antoinette farm, “a 25-five-square-kilometer parcel
located in the Gwaai,” Loveridge writes.

From interviews with staff there, the team learned an elephant carcass was
transported 300 meters from where it was killed to a location for the Palmer
hunt. Downwind from the dead elephant — an appetizing lure for a lion —
staff members constructed a blind in a nearby tree. This is where Palmer
initially shot Cecil, Loveridge writes.

The lion survived the first arrow hit.

“It is clear that Cecil was at this stage mortally wounded and hadn’t moved
far from where he was shot,” the author writes. “This is corroborated by the
GPS data from Cecil’s collar, which allows a forensic reconstruction of
events. The collar sent a position from the hunt site at just before 9 p.m.
By 11 p.m. the collar’s position had moved 80 meters roughly southeast from
the carcass. It therefore seems probable Cecil was shot at some point
between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on July 1.”

Palmer and his hired team finished Cecil off “10 to 12 hours after being
wounded.”

“Cecil suffered incredible cruelty for at least 10 hours, severely wounded
and slowly dying,” the book states. “Clearly, although the wound was severe,
the arrow had missed the vital organs or arteries that would have caused
rapid blood loss and a relatively quick death. Certainly, the lion was so
incapacitated that in all those hours he’d been able to move only 350 meters
from the place where he was shot.”