Cecil death highlights at-risk wildlife
The recreational killing of wildlife has come under the spotlight, as people vent their outrage at the sadistic, calculated way that Cecil was made to suffer for ‘sport’. In Spain and some South American countries, animals are stoned to death at fiestas, goats are thrown off high buildings, and the horns of bulls set alight (that’s if there isn’t bull fighting to amuse blood-sport fans). Bears are still baited in Pakistan and Afghanistan, dogs ripping into their flesh and inflicting a slow death in scenes that Shakespeare would have been familiar with in Elizabethan England. Here, in Ireland, we are less than two months away from another hare-coursing season. An animal whose conservation status is deemed poor and who has all but vanished from many parts of the country is forced to serve as bait for pairs of competing greyhounds. The hares get mauled or tossed about like broken toys on rain-sodden and wind-swept fields from Cork to Donegal.
None of these animals deserves to be tortured to death or mutilated or terrorised for a laugh or a wager, or to be mounted as a grizzly trophy on the wall of some wealthy connoisseur of carcasses. Now, the spectre of Cecil, lying dead and headless and with a smiling hunter posing beside him, hangs over all blood sports.
From the mighty lion to the brooding bear, the wily fox to the humble hare, these creatures form part of the world’s imperilled wildlife heritage. Thanks to Cecil, these animals may yet survive man’s inhumanity.
