Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/550022
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 AUGUST 2015 Opinion 25 even if this was done by the same category of hunter – namely, rich Westerners who view the natural world as their private playground – for the same reason. And that's just lions. It turns out that the same Huange National Park that Cecil once called home, was also the site of a massacre of some 300 elephants in 2013: killed by poisoning water-holes (which implies that all sorts of other animals would also have died as a result). I know it's become fashionable to ask "where were you" when all this took place… but it's a relevant question nonetheless. Why no global fuss about the massacre of 300 elephants in one fell swoop? How do we explain the contrast with a global outpouring of grief and fury over the death of a single lion… out of all the hundreds killed over the past decades? Part of the answer involves the emotive response of people to individual animals such as lions, for all the above cultural reasons. But there is also discrimination of another kind at work here, this between lions and lions. If at least a dozen other specimens have been killed by trophy-hunters since this single incident… why so much fuss specifically about Cecil? For much the same reason, I suppose, as the fuss that was made when Kim Kardashian graced the cover of the Rolling Stone magazine. Cecil was a celebrity lion. He was known to thousands of people around the world: some of whom had travelled thousands of miles to get a distant glimpse of this iconic, black-maned specimen… the largest living lion in Africa (at least, while he was still living). And Walter Palmer shot him. A creature loved and admired by so many people around the world, shot dead for the f leeting amusement of a single, selfish individual. As for all the other lions routinely killed each week in Zimbabwe by other, equally selfish individuals… well, they'd never been on the cover of 'Celebrity African Animal' magazine, had they? This makes them nonentities. And nobody cares about nonentities, be they lions or any other animal (including people). There is, however, another reason for the extraordinary global reaction to the death of this one, solitary celebrity lion named 'Cecil'. It is about the only aspect of this otherwise exaggerated tsunami of outrage that is actually honest and genuine (so of course, it didn't last very long). Even if hypocritical and highly selective, the response to Cecil's death nonetheless indicates a profound shift in cultural attitudes since the days when Hercules could kill and skin 'the largest lion of his time'… and not only escape criticism, but actually be hailed as a hero for his 'bravery'. In today's world, all that has been thrown into reverse. It is humanity itself that has replaced lions, tigers and 'Big Bad Wolves' as the central villains of the piece. It is human activity that is all too often to blame for what we perceive as the great natural injustices of this world: the loss of natural habitat, the exploitation of wildlife for profit, the destruction of entire ecosystems, and the extinction of individual species (such as the Northern Black Rhino, hunted to extinction just last year). Unfortunately for him, Walter Palmer just happened to embody almost every negative aspect of this revised perception of humanity. Just like the lion he killed, he too has become a symbol of something much greater than the sum of his actions. He has come to symbolise all that we perceive as cruel, selfish and inhumane about the human animal. As such, he must be punished… not just for killing Cecil the Lion, but also for reminding us all of how deeply f lawed we are as a species. Is this fair on Walter Palmer? Erm… no, not really. What he did was certainly despicable, and I myself would find it impossible to defend him on any count… but what he is actually being punished for is another crime altogether; a crime that was not committed by Walter Palmer as an individual, but by humanity as a whole. But then again: was it 'fair' that Cecil the Lion died merely to boost one man's ego? Is it 'fair' that his cubs must also be killed in their turn, as decreed by the pitiless laws of nature? Is it ever 'fair', when certain individual injustices are held up for public opprobrium, while other much greater injustices go unpunished and even unnoticed? Nope. As I said before… it really is an unfair world we live in. It is humanity itself that has replaced lions, tigers and 'Big Bad Wolves' as the central villains of the piece Majestic no more – Cecil the lion