Thanks to Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the lion, the public may be losing its tolerance for gratuitous killing of exotic, wild game.

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Thanks to Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the lion, the public may be losing its tolerance for gratuitous killing of exotic, wild game.

While we know safari trophy hunting was a part of the US past including Ernest Hemingway and even the Eagle Scouts, many did not realize it is still thriving.

Safari Club International (SCI) which sponsored Palmer's lethal deed, give no lip service to conservation or skill like some hunting groups. It holds extreme killing derbies that celebrate slaughter like "The African Big Five"club in which hunters try to kill a lion, leopard, elephant, African buffalo and rhinoceros and the "African 29" club in which hunters kill 29 different animals including a lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, buffalo, three kinds of antelopes, a wildebeest, impala, gazelle and many more. There is also a club for "hunters" who have killed more than 300 species on six continents like a National Geographic for the bloodthirsty.

In 2006, SCI defeated an amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the House of Representatives that would have banned the import of sport-hunted polar bear trophies from Canada. Since Cecil, 30 airlines have refused to ship big game trophies.

SCI has programs to extend the fun of killing to physically incapacitated hunters, even if the animals have to be baited or held in position. On its website, SCI boasted how its Safari Wish program enabled a spina bifida patient to kill a greyhound-sized young doe from his wheelchair. Whee. The young man missed two hogs eating at a feeder and likely baited but got the doe because "the Hunt Club suspended the deer harvest rules for his hunt" said SCI.

In an attempt look altruistic rather than sadistic, SCI seeks to give the poor and hungry the carcasses its hunters never wanted to eat in the first place. But in 2008, health officials told food pantries to reject the meat because of lead fragments from bullets leaving SCI with 317,000 pounds of meat "harvested" for no reason. "This is disheartening, and we certainly don't think this program should come to an end on the unscientific assessment that has occurred here," lamented SCI lawyer Doug Burdin.

You Don't Have to Go to Africa to Kill a Zebra

There is so much money in shooting exotic animals, trophy operations have sprung up in the US. "Hunters" can shoot zebras and other exotic animals at operations like Circle E in Bedias, TX and Heartland Wildlife Ranches in Ethel, MO for as much as $6,500 a head. "Hunters come from across the country to take aim at trophy animals" which include zebras reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A three-day hunt for water buffalo at the Heartland costs $4,000.

A chilling expose in the Washington Post says that hundreds of exotic trophy operations exist in Texas alone, "some of which offer opportunities to bag or buy such unusual prey as Russian boars, nilgais, barasinghas, oryx, zebras, giraffes and wildebeests." Unless the species is endangered, federal authorities will not regulate such operations says the Post. In one case an operation was cited because "staff members apparently used dart guns to tranquilize animals, then herded them toward hunters for the kill" said the Post--but the charge was not about ethics: the tranquillizing substance was apparently illegal.

Owners of such exotic animal operations, which are backed by SCI, say those with ethical objections to what they do are trying to deprive them of their livelihood. "These animals belong to me. I should be able to do with them what I want," Charly Seale, executive director of the Exotic Wildlife Association, the exotic ranches' trade group told the Post "The government just shouldn't be telling us what we can and can't do with them."

During the 2008 presidential election, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson floated a picture of a long-horned, African antelope called an oryx that he killed on Ted Turner's Armendaris Ranch in New Mexico. Richardson killed the oryx with one shot from 100 yards on a "guided" outing he bragged. Photos show Richardson kneeling beside the beast, a fence clearly behind him.

Trophy Hunting Goes All The Way To the White House

President George H.W. Bush, former Vice President Dan Quayle and the late Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. were proud members of SCI and pleaded with the Botswana government to keep trophy lion hunts available for trophy hunters like them. They are widely believed to have killed lions themselves on safaris.

In 2012 the King of Spain enjoyed killing an elephant (to the horror of his subjects) and the year before the CEO of Godaddy.com, Bob Parsons, videotaped his killing of an elephant. Nice. Last summer, Jimmy John's founder and CEO Jimmy John Liautaud posted photos of himself posing with elephants, a rhinoceros and a leopard he killed. Some are boycotting the chain. Donald Trump's son are also trophy hunters.

Palmer himself posed with at least two other "trophy" animals before Cecil flashing the same "Aren't-I-a-he-man?" grin. In January, a woman who confessed to spray-painting the words "perv" and "scum" on the sign of Palmer's River Bluff Dental practice was only givenprobation, suggesting even the courts might be disgusted with Cecil's killer.

(Article changed on February 4, 2016 at 11:53)

(Article changed on February 4, 2016 at 11:55)

(Article changed on February 4, 2016 at 13:28)

Authors Bio:

Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random House. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN and NPR and lectured at medical schools and at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library.