Cecil, Scarface, Sekoti: Does giving animals ‘human faces’ help or harm?

In 2015, the killing of a lion in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North province created a perfect global storm of protest, with major titles such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and many others running front-page outrage pieces on the incident.Western animal rights activists, enraged by the hunting of the lion, demanded action from their governments against trophy hunting with France and the Netherlands responding by banning the importation of trophies into their countries.

The United States went further, with airlines there refusing to carry animal trophies and the legislature passing the Cecil Act restricting imports of lion and other species’ trophies.