Sir Roger Moore on Cecil the lion: 'Hunting is a coward's pastime'

We should protect the most vulnerable and helpless in society, not destroy them – much less derive pleasure from doing so

By Sir Roger Moore

8:16PM BST 29 Jul 2015

Fact: hunting is a coward's pastime, and no one has demonstrated that more clearly than the American dentist Walter Palmer, who apparently paid over £30,000 to gun down a lion to add his head to a trophy wall. That wall includes the heads of animals he has shot at close range – with the help of paid facilitators, of course, from all over the world – including a leopard, an elk, a buffalo and even a polar bear, who won't have to wait for global warming to be killed off.

What happened bears repeating: the man, aided by several guides, did not stalk a wild beast who was a danger to anyone. The animal was lured out of his safety zone in a park and was blinded by a spotlight. Palmer then fired a high-powered weapon to injure the lion, who, with a steel arrow stuck through him, crept away and suffered for 40 long hours before the "hunter" arrived and the animal was skinned and decapitated.

It has been alleged that the guides also tried to hide the radio collar on Cecil's neck because it contained a tracking device. You'd be forgiven for thinking that behind the dentist's unnaturally white teeth is a person devoid of moral fibre, conscience or decency.

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