'I was on safari when Cecil the Lion was killed.'

It’s two months since Cecil the lion was killed by hunter Walter Palmer, an American dentist, in Zimbabwe. Cecil, a favourite among locals, was wounded with an arrow, then – 40 hours later – shot and beheaded. Gael Jennings was in Zimbabwe at the time, and here she writes about her experience with the country’s magnificent wildlife.

At roughly the same time that Cecil the magnificent patriarch of Hwange National Park, was being ignominiously murdered by a cowardly white foreigner in Zimbabwe, just a couple of kilometres away, a mature male leopard padded out from the scrub right in front of our little open truck and stood calmly regarding his surroundings (including us), before slipping silently into the bush like a surreal visitation.

His glossy beauty, his hugeness and impossible health, the perfection of his sleek dappled coat, his carved head, soft ears and unflinching amber eyes (and his proximity…) silenced all of us in the truck.

We were quite literally awe-struck by his being.

How could such a creature actually exist?

He was too unearthly magnificent to materialise in this impoverished scrub and dirt, let alone still live and hunt here, as he and his predecessors  had for millennia.

This was the creature of our childhood fantasies - potent, exotic, from that mystical place called Africa.

And that, I think, is part of the nub of our anguished response to the murder of Cecil the lion.

We have a love affair with African animals, and there’s good reason for it.

Africa is an ancient continent.

This is where we human beings first evolved, distinct from the apes, and from where waves of us spread around the world, over hundreds of thousands of years, to become who we are today.

We rubbed elbows and paws (and prickles and seeds) with all the predecessors of animals and plants that are still there.

This is our land, these creatures are the descendants of our primeval animal co-travellers.

This magical continent of vast deserts, swamps, savannahs, lakes, deltas, mountains - of billions of species, all interconnected over millions of years of history - not only links us to our origins, but holds a palpable feeling of the power of ultimate creation.

This is where it all began.

And the magic of that brew - of serendipitous molecules, events, scraps of life that led to us, and them, the animals - infuses you.

There’s a feeling that it's imperative it be kept in balance, that the elements that made the magic must not be allowed to disappear, or be disturbed.

Speaking of disturbed, perhaps I’m sounding a little batty myself.

I was there less than 3 weeks, in just 4 countries, camping, with local guides and hosts, yet I felt imbued by a sort of wonder at these lands floating in a timeless zone of grace and balance, where the creatures moved through their landscape unperturbed.

The quietly ambling elephant, the fly-swatting tail of the grazing zebra, the awkwardly loping giraffe, the yawning lion, the honk of the hippo at night, the startled kudu taking flight, the stampeding buffalo drew me effortlessly into the dream of an ancient continuity, a living example of The Web of Life (oh god, do you remember that Year 11 and 12 biology text book??).

In our little truck, we were silent observers of this infinite and intricate tableau.

We learnt of their interdependence - how the elephant’s poor digestion leaves seeds in its faeces for certain birds to eat and spread, and others to make nests from; how it uproots trees to get to the leaves on top, creating root feasts for the warthogs; how animals of all descriptions follow each other’s scents, dust and tracks nightly to the nearest waterhole ... but best of all, we were witness to the extraordinary durability of muscle, bone, sinew, hide and fur; massive creatures, perfect in every detail, wondrous to our eyes.

How could anyone kill such perfection?

I left Africa in a dream; when I heard, back in Australia, that the gutless dentist had killed Cecil I just could not believe that anyone would want to take the life of such magnificent, timeless creatures, walking miracles.

It was like a rape, a desecration of something bigger than one small person’s venal desires.

In Africa, we were kept firmly in our 4WD, strictly along dedicated dirt tracks (sadly, deeply rutted and holed, thus generating about 10 hours of ‘African massage ‘ daily), and never ever encroached past a certain distance when we sighted an animal in case we disturbed it, or its habitat.

Silent in our vehicle, we were told that we were largely invisible to them, not perceived as dangerous unless we challenged them or walked on 2 legs - when we became recognisable as humans, a well-known, lethal threat.

Yet we were so close to lions, cubs, giraffes, antelopes, crocodiles, hippos, zebra, warthogs, kudu, the leopard, and they so completely ignored us, that you almost felt they were tame (don't try it - they aren't).

Cecil had been that close to hundreds of thousands of humans in every variety of vehicle over his 14 years.

That poor lion was used to people, their smells and voices, and he would not have been scared by Palmer the way a real wild animal would.

What a shameful, immoral, cowardly, cheat’s act, to capitalise on the respect shown by all the humans coming before, to take the lion unawares.

What struck me deeply in Zimbabwe and Botswana, in speaking each day and over the campfire at night with the local guides, was the commitment of those countries to the enforcement of respect and safety of animals and their habitats.

Laws were in place which protected vast national parks with rich ecosystems, banning all hunting in them.

No plant, animal or stone can be removed, and police have the power to shoot and kill poachers on sight without trial.

Although some hunting is allowed outside the national parks, it is heavily regulated, requires licences, has to be of certain animals at certain times.

Palmer and co allegedly worked around all these rules by luring Cecil from his protection, torturing, beheading and eventually murdering him outside of his safety zone.

But they still broke the law.

Zimbabwe law is very specific, and a1999 amendment to hunting laws very specifically, strictly and absolutely prohibits hunting that uses any type of crossbow (The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, 1999 Amendment).

Walter Palmer was not just immoral, cowardly, corrupt, venal and unsporting - he reportedly used a cross bow, and if that’s true, he’s criminal as well.

I think of this mid-western, middle-aged, middle-class white man and his vicious weapon - and I think of these glorious animals I had the honour to share space with, and I just wish that Palmer had had the guts for a fair fight, and had walked unarmed up to our leopard, and seen how nature, in all its infinite wisdom, played out.

Gael is a Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She is an award winning national TV and radio broadcaster, author, and a regular commentator on ABC TV News Breakfast and 774 ABC radio.For more from Gael, check out her Twitter page.

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