Dentist who killed Cecil the lion hits back

THE US dentist whose killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe fuelled a global backlash has disputed some accounts of the hunt.

A file photo of Cecil in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. Picture: AP

In an interview, Walter Palmer also expressed agitation at the animosity directed at those close to him and said he will soon be returning to work.

He has spent more than a month out of sight after becoming the target of protests and threats, but intends to return to his Minneapolis dental practice today.

Mr Palmer said he believes he acted legally and that he was stunned to find out his hunting party had killed one of Zimbabwe’s treasured animals.

Protesters targeted his dental practice amid fury over Cecil. Picture: Getty

“If I had known this lion had a name and was important to the country or a study, obviously I wouldn’t have taken it,” said Mr Palmer.

“Nobody in our hunting party knew before or after the name of this lion.”

Cecil was a fixture in the vast Hwange National Park and had been fitted with a GPS collar as part of Oxford University lion research.

Mr Palmer said he shot the big cat using an arrow from his compound bow outside the park’s borders but it did not die immediately.

He disputed conservationist accounts that the wounded lion wandered for 40 hours and was finished off with a gun, saying that it was tracked down the next day and killed with an arrow. Mr Palmer refused to say how much he paid for the hunt, or discuss others he has undertaken.

Some high-level Zimbabwean officials have called for Mr Palmer’s extradition, but no formal steps toward getting the dentist to return to the country have been publicly disclosed.

Mr Palmer’s adviser, Joe Friedberg, a Minneapolis lawyer, said he has heard nothing from authorities about domestic or international investigations since early August.

Mr Friedberg said he offered to have Mr Palmer take questions from US Fish and Wildlife Service authorities on the condition the session be recorded. He said he never heard back.

After Mr Palmer was named in late July as the hunter who killed Cecil, his Bloomington clinic and Eden Prairie home became protest sites, and animal welfare groups vandalised a holiday property he owns in Florida.

Mr Palmer has been vilified across social media, with some posts suggesting violence against him.

He described himself as “heartbroken” for causing disruptions for staff at his clinic, which was shut for weeks until reopening in late August without him on the premises.

And he said the ordeal has been especially hard on his wife and adult daughter, who both felt threatened.

“I don’t understand that level of humanity to come from people not involved at all,” Mr Palmer said.

He said he feels safe enough to return to work, saying his staff and his patients support him and want him back, but declined to say where he has spent the last six weeks or describe security steps he has taken.