Just to put everybody on the same page. The only illegal part of the whole deal appears to be that the lion was shot on a property with no lion quota. It is not illegal to bait the animal along Hwange's borders, if the hunted property has a lion quota. You may not like it-but that is the way it is.
For example, Matetsi 3, 4 and 5 (just south of where I hunted) border Hwange on the north side of the park. I believe that each of these has one lion on quota. It is legal to bait lions in from the park-however you can't hunt these areas government areas after dark as you can on communal/private lands along the Hwange border. Also there are resident lions living throughout Matetsi
For those that think that baiting along the border is "Yucky" take a look at Kenya. The protected areas there have lost their buffer zones-there is no hunting or other consumptive uses of wildlife there. They have lost 60 to 70 percent of the game-including in te parks.
http://idahoforwildlife.com/Charles%20K ... unting.pdf
There is a movement(maybe law in Tanzania-not sure about Zim) to only shoot lions 6 years or older as the idea is that they are unable to hang onto a pride after that. I have seen something that Cecil lost the pride once and paired up with a younger lion to get it back.
SSS>>>So, he's just concerned about the safety of those innocent villagers. I guess he was concerned about the safety of his fellow Americans when he was convicted of lying to a federal agent about shooting a bear illegally a few years ago. <<<
Oh gee, a snarky comment from SSS regarding something he knows absolutely nothing about. I freely admit that I only care about African wildlife-I really don't give a shit about the people-However, I recognize that the local communities have to be a part of the conservation-you can't do much without them buying into the program. I also recognize that rural Africans are bearing the costs of living with destructive animals
and that is part of the conservation equation.
Also just a tidbit about elephant hunting to show the scale of sport hunting versus poaching.
I read an article recently that said about 140 elephants a
YEAR are sport hunted throughout Africa. Conversely, 96 elephants a
DAY are poached. Mostly the ivory from them heads to China-but our keyboard warriors are all up in arms about the 140 a year and keep pretty quiet about the 96 a day.