• AdelleChattre
    +2

    Do with your sympathies what you will. Since you ask, though — no, this recidivist convicted poacher deserves no sympathy.

    Here’s the interview this report skims.

    He claims he didn’t know he was killing a beloved lion. That’s a remorseless notpology. The line that he, his lawyer and his PR guy lay out at that interview can be summed up as “I already got away with this, and I’m kind of a big deal around here. Poor, poor me.”

    You say that he thought his poaching was “fully legal.” He actually doesn’t make this claim in the interview. His lawyer says it was [technically] legal, and credits the professional poachers Palmer hired for it being successful. When you say fully legal, you’ve got to be overlooking that this trophy-hunter went to a farm to hunt lions. Do you think there may have been some thought given to the wildlife sanctuary next to that farm? This guy has been convicted before, in this country, of killing bear without a license and fishing without a license. You know, poaching. Somehow, on a ~$50K+ hunting trip to Zimbabwe, he’s just going to patter around a bucolic farm for a while? C’mon.

    As for whether he’s had his and his family’s lives destroyed by what you call ‘vigilantes,’ I’d say he seems to be in pretty good shape. So some kids dressed in lion costumes protested at his office a while back. There were a couple protesters when he went back to work all business-as-usual. It’s not like his head’s mounted on a wall in a dentist’s office somewhere.