In 2015, American dentist Walter Palmer, a trophy-hunter enthusiast, travelled to Zimbabwe for an exotic hunting expedition. In exchange for approximately $54,000, Palmer was given the opportunity to work with professional local hunters to lure Cecil, a beloved lion from Hwange National Park, out of the protected sanctuary.
Palmer then shot the lion with a crossbow but did not kill him. Instead Palmer and his hunting companions tracked Cecil for forty hours before shooting him with a gun.5 Cecil was then beheaded and skinned, after which his corpse was left to rot. The landowner did not allocate a lion on his hunting quota for 2015 making the killing of any lion illegal, especially one that was lured from a protected national park. The public outcry on social media sites led Palmer to shut down not only his social media accounts but also his dental practice in Eden, Minnesota.