Four takeaway items about the unethical dentist:
1. (Walter J. Palmer and the professional hunter used food to lure the animal out of the game preserve.)
2. After the botched shot, hunter Walter J. Palmer and the professional hunter tracked the wounded lion and found him some forty hours later, whence they dispatched him with a rifle.
3. When the hunters found that he was fitted with a GPS collar because he was being studied by Hwange Lion Research, funded by Oxford University; they allegedly tried to destroy the collar but failed.
4. On 22 April, 2008, Walter J Palmer, age 48, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota pleaded guilty to making a false statement to a federal agent in connection with the poaching of a black bear in the state of Wisconsin. Palmer had been issued a license to hunt a black bear in Subzone A1 in northern Wisconsin.
Walter J. Palmer subsequently killed one some forty miles outside of Subzone A1 and then repeatedly lied to US Fish and Wildlife investigators about the bear’s origin. He was looking at a maximum of five years’ imprisonment for that, but in the end was fined $2,939 and put on probation for one year.
Walter J. Palmer was spared the felony conviction chiefly because he was a dentist and it might have impacted negatively on his ability to prescribe medications and his license to practice. Not to mention owning a firearm.
Check out article for more info.
Baiting lions is not illegal in Zimbabwe, or in most places lions are hunted.
I have not seen *any* reports that bait was used inside the preserve.
It appears the hunt was illegal, because there was no quota for a lion in the area, but baiting is a legal and ethical way to hunt lions.
The whole idea of permits to hunt lions and other species is to raise money for the conservation of those species, including game management and enforcing laws. That makes those species a valuable resource to be managed, and keeps them from being hunted into extinction instead.
If this particular lion had not been a photogenic dandy at the Park, I wonder if there would be such an outcry. If it had been known instead to raid livestock now and then and maybe nab an errant toddler, this would be a non-story. Instead the lion has been anthropomorphized, much like Bambi and thus, the dentist is being dragged over the coals.
As for game violations, that seems to be indicated, but no more so than for any other lion which was to be considered off limits to hunters. He did not go into the refuge and hunt the lion, the lion (for whatever reason) came to him.
In this case, the people I consider most culpable are the guides (or those in their employ) who lured the lion with bait, (although bait is hardly lion specific--it is designed to attract a lion, any lion, and would have to have been very craftily used to lure one specific lion.
In addition, the guides, who should be aware of local law, should have ascertained the lion was not collared, a task which may be made more difficult by the lion's mane.
The dentist should have made a better shot or not taken the shot which resulted in only wounding the animal.
I am not aware of how collared animals are tracked, but it should have been noted rather quickly that this particular lion was missing, especially if it is a favorite with the locals and tourists. The collar should have been tracked to make sure the lion was still in the preserve.
The guides were likely the ones who tried to destroy the collar, as it'd be their butts for guiding the dentist to hunt a collared animal.
As for the bear incident, the regulations have changed, and the current ones are available here
That incident tends to make one think the dentist might have been less likely to protest unscrupulous behaviour on the part of his guides, but I would think the onus of making sure their client did not break game laws would lie with them (they are the professionals on their home turf), and not the other way around.