When Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist, killed 13-year-old Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe’s

When Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist, killed 13-year-old Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park last month, the world was outraged. Palmer’s guides illegally lured Cecil away from the protection of the national park where Palmer killed it.

I don’t blame Palmer. He was working within the law and trusted his guides to do the same. They failed him. The guides should be prosecuted and punished as the law allows.

Now that the dust has settled, however, bigger issues loom. Trophy hunting is legal. Sometimes hunts take place in enclosed areas (canned hunts). Lions, elephants, giraffes and rhinoceroses are fair game in some places. The question is, should they be?

I say no. It’s 2015, and there is simply no reason to kill magnificent animals simply to turn them into trophies on a wall or for financial gain.

I know the rationale. The exorbitant fees trophy hunters pay (Palmer paid $54,000) are used to fund conservation programs that benefit trophy species. But how much really goes to conservation? Corrupt officials no doubt get more than their fair share.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Trophy hunting is for the few and the wealthy. Consider U.S. hunters. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reported that 13.7 million hunters took to the field in 2011. Of those, 11.6 million hunted big game such as deer, elk and bears. How many of those big-game hunters could afford a trophy hunt in Africa? Not many.

Safari Club International (www.safariclub.org) is an organization devoted to “protecting hunter’s rights and promoting wildlife conservation.” Its website claims 55,000 members, and at least some of them are from outside the U.S. So at best, less than one-half of 1 percent of licensed American big-game hunters could claim membership in the Safari Club. So why continue to permit trophy hunting for the elite few? Let’s ban it. Worldwide.

Sadly though, nothing will happen just because you read this column. Nothing will happen because you have been sickened by recent photos you’ve seen on TV and in newspapers of trophy hunters posing with dead giraffes, elephants and lions.

This is the kind of issue that requires outrage and protest that will not subside. I nominate the World Wildlife Fund (www.worldwildlife.org) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (www.wcs.org ) to carry the torch. WWF, with its iconic panda logo, and WCS can tap into people’s outrage to ban trophy hunting. Equally important are means to enforce conservation laws and eliminate poaching.

Help me test the legitimacy of my position. When schools resume, I ask 5th- and 6th-grade teachers to do a quick poll of their students. Explain what trophy hunting is and ask if they approve. Adults, do the same thing at church, Sunday school or civic-group meetings. Then send me your results.

So thank you, Dr. Palmer. What you did was outrageous, and I suspect your dental career is over, but maybe you have lit a fuse that will destroy trophy hunting as we know it. You’ve exposed its underbelly.

So what’s a trophy hunter to do? I suggest spending about $15,000 to buy top-of-the-line camera gear, including a few expensive telephoto lenses. Anyone can take a photo safari in a Land Rover and come home with decent pics of African wildlife. But getting National Geographic quality photos of trophy species’ behavior would require the same skill, patience, expertise and wealth that killing trophy species with a weapon requires. And you still get a trophy to hang on the wall.

Finally, please do not misunderstand; this is not a screed against hunting. I’ve often written about the biological and conservation bases of hunting. And my perspective has not changed.

But here in the U.S., states monitor their wildlife populations. Seasons and bag limits are adjusted as populations ebb and flow. Can you imagine the highway carnage we’d see every year if hunters didn’t kill lots of deer? And eastern black bear populations keep growing and causing property damage where people infringe on bear habitat.

Hunting regulated by professional biologists in the U.S is here to stay, but international trophy hunting should end today.

Dr. Shalaway can be heard on Birds & Nature from 3 to 4 p.m. Sunday afternoons on 620 KHB Radio (Pittsburgh) or live online at www.khbradio.com. Visit his website, www.drshalawaycom, or contact him directly at sshalaway@aol.com or 2222 Fish Ridge Road, Cameron, WV 26033.