11 Tributes to Cecil the Lion

Cecil was a lion living in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. For seven years, he wore a tracking collar from Oxford University as a participant in a study of lions. Information from the collar was sent via satellite to researchers studying the lives of lions in order to aid conservation efforts. The lion was a park favorite, observed and photographed by many visitors to Hwange.

Last month, 13-year-old Cecil was lured out of the park and killed in a trophy hunt by American dentist Walter Palmer. While some regulations appear to have been circumvented, lion hunting was not illegal in Zimbabwe at the time (lion, elephant, and leopard hunting have since been banned in the area surrounding the park). Regardless of which laws were broken, the world reacted with sadness and outrage. Dr. Palmer went into seclusion as his business was picketed, and Cecil became a symbol of threatened African wildlife. An outpouring of support had brought over £550,000 in donations to the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) for lion research. And quite a few artists and others were inspired to create tributes to the real-life Lion King. See some of them in an article posted at mental_floss.