Cecil the lion and outrage in the jungle

OPINION:

Cecil the lion was a metaphor for our times, barely remembered now in the wake of the violence that spawns so much hysteria and outrage. But he was big once. Cecil, so the narrative went, was at home in an African national park, minding his own business on a summer’s day in 2015, dreaming of his favorite lioness and of a gazelle or zebra that would make a tasty dinner, when a dentist from Minnesota and his hunter guide baited a field to lured him out of the park where he was conveniently killed. His fine carcass would make a fine rug in the dentist’s manly den.

The story also made a fine story on the CBS Evening News. The story, as told, ignited universal outrage. The dentist, back home in Minnesota by then, was forced into hiding and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals even demanded that he pay for his crime at the end of a rope. In the CBS account, “Cecil, a well-known male lion, living in Hwange Game Reserve in Zimbabwe, was lured away from the sanctuary of the park by an illegal party of big-game hunters.”

Hollywood, where dudgeon in the service of morality is permanently high, was particularly outraged. Mia Farrow learned the dentist’s address and tweeted it to any of her friends inclined to go after him. Jimmy Kimmel cried big salty tears on television and told his viewers to send a contribution to Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Center, called Wilderu, which puts radio collars on lions to track their adventures in the jungle. Wilderu had collared Lion.

The wildlife organization said the manufactured moral outrage was “the biggest global response to a wildlife story there’s ever been.” Zimbabwe and several other nations changed their hunting laws to prevent such outrages in the future, and when it was reported that Cecil’s cubs had been killed, snuffing out a noble strain of leonine DNA, several airlines banned the shipping of hunting trophies. The story of Cecil the lion broke a million hearts.

The story of Cecil’s demise further illustrates the risks that lie in many a good story. Such stories grow like kudzu in the absence of the skeptical editors who are mostly gone now to the great newsroom in the sky. Almost none of the particulars of the Cecil story were true. Wilderu investigated the story after the fact and discovered that neither the dentist nor his guide used bait or anything else to lure Cecil out of his home in the park, because, well, the park wasn’t his home. Most of Cecil’s “core range,” his home, was outside the park, and hunting him was perfectly legal.

Wilderu knew this because Cecil was only one of 65 lions wearing Wilderu’s radio collars in the part of the jungle where hunting lions was legal. A report, eagerly passed along by the many outraged folk, that killing a collared lion was illegal, turned out not to be true, either. Most of the lions legally hunted wore radio collars, and the area where Cecil was shot is well managed, with a very small quota of huntable lions. Lions, who are more intelligent than a lot of their friends in Hollywood, know that, which is why they congregate there.

There’s a moral to the saga of Cecil the lion, which is that details have ruined many a good story, and details matter. Except in Hollywood, where Cecil remains a martyr and CBS, Jimmy Kimmel, PETA and Mia Farrow continue to demonize objects of their disaffection, the police on patrol, before they have any idea of what’s really going on. A half-cocked story, like a half-cocked gun, can be lethal in the hands of the irresponsible.