Dawn was breaking when Cecil the lion approached a watering hole near Somalisa Camp where Bowen Island’s Carol Petersen was also just starting her day.
As Cecil marked his territory he called out, a sound that has thrilled thousands of visitors to Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.
“He walked closer and closer and then disappeared in the bushes,” says the owner of Nature Encounters Tours and Travel. “I ran over to the main dining area, met my guide Calvet and we gathered the rest of the group and piled into our Land Cruiser to follow him.
“The sun was just coming up and it was ‘fresh’ — he was so cool. He just walked down this road calling and marking his territory. Fabulous.”
A media storm was ignited on Tuesday after it was revealed that a Minnesota trophy hunter, who’s now in hiding, had killed the beloved 13-year-old lion. Zimbabwean authorities say bait was used to lure Cecil outside the national park’s protective boundaries.
“It breaks my heart,” Petersen says of Cecil’s death. “It’s unbelievably sad.”
She understands why people hunt for food but says more must be done to prevent people like the Minnesotan dentist paying tens of thousands of dollars for hunting expeditions.
“Hunting takes out the biggest and the best — the lions with the biggest manes, the elephants with the longest tusks, the antelopes with the biggest horns,” Petersen says. “[These animals] have made it through drought, good times, bad times, and they’re the ones who should be protected.
“Hunters make it impossible for these genes to carry on.”
She last saw Cecil last September.
“We found him in an open area of Hwange National Park. He was just lying down, minding his own business when a herd of elephants walked by fairly close to him. The females were bugged and chased him off. This handsome, regal male ran away like a puppy.”
She believes that one of the ways to prevent the deaths of other Cecils is by visiting Africa and investing tourism dollars — money that will be spent on hiring game wardens and preserving parkland — and shooting Cecil’s offspring with a camera, not a gun or arrow.
