This Shipping Company Is Rising Above “Cecil” Insanity


After making their statements on Twitter late Monday night, these Airlines have joined the battlecry of angry citizens looking for justice for Cecil the Lion and hoping to put an end to the slaughter of some of the world’s most majestic animals.

Hunters and others looking to ship lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo heads and other big-game trophies across the world still have options available, even as Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Air Canada announced this week that they will no longer allow such cargo on their planes.

Late Monday night, American Airlines announced its own ban on shipments of trophies from the animals that comprise what hunters frequently call “the big five.”

“Lions, elephants and the other species that make up the Africa Big Five belong on the savanna, not on the walls and in home museums of wealthy people who spend a fortune to kill the grandest, most majestic animals in the world,” Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, said in a statement. “Delta has set a great example, and no airline should provide a getaway vehicle for the theft of Africa’s wildlife by these killers.”

The Humane Society had urged the airline industry “to join the international fight to end trophy hunting.”

As The Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham reported, wealthy American tourists account for the majority of lions killed for sport in Africa. A 2011 report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare found that between 1999 and 2008, Americans brought home lion trophies (including heads and pelts) representing 64 percent of all African lions killed for sport during that period.

“In Africa overall,” the report says, Americans “make up the greatest number” of big-game hunters targeting the big five, as well as animals such as antelopes and zebras — “particularly in countries where hunting safaris are expensive.”

While many people divided on whether or not James Palmer should be held accountable for Cecil’s death, most agree that it’s something that should never have happened. However, is it fair to refuse service to those who hunt these animals legally, especially considering the government’s recent involvement in a certain case revolving around the refusal of service by a bakery in Oregon. The lines are all very blurry.

Read More at The Washington Post

Photo: Vince O’Sullivan on Flickr



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