Lion's killing draws U.S. agency's probe

U.N. assembly sounds poaching alarm

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday that it was investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing of Cecil, a lion that is thought to have been lured out of its protected habitat in Zimbabwe this month and killed by Walter Palmer, an American dentist and hunter.

"That investigation will take us wherever the facts lead," said Edward Grace, a deputy chief of law enforcement at the agency. "At this point in time, however, multiple efforts to contact Dr. Walter Palmer have been unsuccessful."

The killing of Cecil has been publicized worldwide this week, and Palmer, who has said he believed the killing of the animal was legal, has been the target of an Internet shaming campaign.

The lion, well known to those who visited Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe and by many locals, was killed and beheaded -- the head intended as a trophy for the hunter.

Wildlife officials and conservationists say some big-game hunters in search of exotic trophies and poachers who brazenly cross into protected parks and other habitats to slice the tusks off elephants and chop the horns off rhinoceroses, leaving the animals to die, are causing a global wildlife crisis.

Citing what it called alarming trends in illicit hunting and poaching of animals, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution Thursday that supporters say would be the start of a global effort to tackle illegal poaching and trafficking of wildlife.

In an address to the General Assembly, Harald Braun, the permanent representative of Germany to the United Nations, said illicit hunting had become a pressing global issue. He described the poaching of an elephant for its tusks near a national park in South Africa this week, and the killings of more than 700 rhinoceroses for their horns in South Africa this year.

"The time to act is now," Braun said. "No one country, region or agency working alone will be able to succeed."

U.N. officials said that the resolution would foster cooperation among countries to fight money laundering, and that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would recommend actions based on the resolution next year.

Public attention to poaching, often carried out by criminal gangs and cartels seeking the value of ivory and horns, has increased, officials say. This week, in addition to the elephant killed near Kruger National Park in South Africa, five elephants -- an adult female and four of her calves -- were killed for their tusks at a park in Kenya.

While in Kenya last weekend, President Barack Obama made the tightening of the ivory trade a key point of his visit. He announced changes that would effectively ban the commercial trade of African elephant ivory in the United States in an attempt to further close trading loopholes exploited by traffickers.

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, the global ivory trade drives the killing of as many as 35,000 elephants a year across the continent. In 2012, The New York Times reported on rhinoceros poaching, finding that horns were traded at $30,000 a pound, a price that rendered them more valuable than gold. The practice of illegal trafficking is estimated to bring in at least $10 billion per year, with most of the customers in Africa and North America, U.N. officials said in a statement released Thursday.

Leigh Henry, an official at the World Wildlife Fund, said the resolution sent a "powerful message from the highest possible level" about the need to end what many feel is a growing criminal threat to wildlife.

Cecil had been closely watched by researchers at the University of Oxford since 2008 as part of efforts to study a decline in Africa's lion population and to better understand the threats the animals face.

David Macdonald, the founder of the university's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, recalled that a brother of Cecil's, called Jericho, had once been ensnared by wires that are commonly used to trap lions, but said it was likely that the trap had been set by locals seeking other wild animals. Jericho was freed from the wire.

Poaching is just one threat facing the greater habitat of the lions, Macdonald said. Lions who attack the cattle and sheep of ranchers are often killed to try to protect the livestock.

Donations to Macdonald's organization, which tracks about 30 lions, have surged since Cecil's killing was widely publicized.

"The attention on the single animal might be sort of a barometer of people's concern," Macdonald said. "But what I would like is if people see this in the wider landscape."

A Section on 07/31/2015

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