Cecil the Lion's Killer Breaks His Silence

The American dentist who killed Zimbabwe’s iconic Cecil the lion, fuelling global backlash, has broken weeks of silence.

Walter Palmer spent more than a month out of sight after he became the target of protests and threats. He has vowed to return to his dental practice.

In an interview conducted jointly by The Associated Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune that advisers said would be the only one granted, Palmer said again that he believes he acted legally and that he was stunned to find out his hunting party had killed one of Zimbabwe’s treasured animals.

“If I had known this lion had a name and was important to the country or a study obviously I wouldn’t have taken it,” the trophy hunter said.

“Nobody in our hunting party knew before or after the name of this lion.”

Cecil was a fixture in the vast Hwange National Park and had been fitted with a GPS collar as part of Oxford University lion research.

Palmer said he shot Cecil with an arrow from his compound bow outside the park's borders but he didn't die immediately. He disputed conservationist accounts that the wounded lion wandered for 40 hours and was finished off with a gun, saying it was tracked down the next day and killed with an arrow.

Some high-level Zimbabwean officials have called for Palmer’s extradition, but no formal steps toward getting the dentist to return to Zimbabwe have been publicly disclosed.

Palmer has been vilified across social media, with some posts suggesting violence against him.

He described himself as “heartbroken” for causing disruptions for staff at his clinic, which was shuttered for weeks until reopening in late August without him on the premises.

And he said the ordeal has been especially hard on his wife and adult daughter, who both felt threatened.

“I don’t understand that level of humanity to come after people not involved at all,” Palmer said.

As for himself, he said he feels safe enough to return to work — “My staff and my patients support me and they want me back” — but declined to say where he’s spent the last six weeks or describe security steps he has taken.

“I’ve been out of the public eye. That doesn’t mean I’m in hiding,” Palmer said.

“I’ve been among people, family and friends. Location is really not that important.”

Asked whether he would return to Zimbabwe for future hunts, Palmer said, “I don’t know about the future.”

He estimated he had been there four times and said, “Zimbabwe has been a wonderful country for me to hunt in, and I have always followed the laws.”

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