VIDEO: Cecil the lion’s killer returns to dental practice

The Minnesota dentist who killed Zimbabwe’s famed Cecil the lion broke a weeks-long silence in an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune published on Monday.

The newspaper reported that Walter Palmer is returning to his dental practice "in hopes of getting his professional and personal life back on track" after the international controversy.

"This has been especially hard on my wife and my daughter," Palmer told the Star-Tribune.

Palmer has been accused of illegally poaching the protected lion after it was lured out of a national park.

The lion was shot with a bow and a gun. Palmer has insisted the hunt was legal.