Because of Cecil, the Lion I know that my feelings regarding this story are shared by others - 'collecting' this male specimen of the species was the wrong thing to do. He 'collected' it because it was perfectly healthy, therefore there would be others.<p>In the UK 'egg collectors' that collect rare birds eggs get given short shrift, actual birds in far off places aren't afford Cecil the Lion levels of outrage yet the sentiment is the same, at least for me.
I think this whole thing is kind of ironic, e.g. consider John James Audubon:<p>"He shot and killed every bird he painted. Audubon was a noted hunter and taxidermist, and much of the money he made during his lifetime was from selling animal skins, a practice that in part helped to fund the printing of "Birds of America." But don't assume that he took pleasure from killing the birds he painted: "The moment a bird was dead," he said, "no matter how beautiful it had been in life, the pleasure of possession became blunted for me."<p>Kill one bird, get targeted by the internet rage mob - kill a few thousand and you get a Google Doodle.
Here's a link to the referenced Audubon story, along with a picture of the bird and the odd editor's note (at the bottom).<p><a href="http://www.audubon.org/news/moustached-kingfisher-photographed-first-time" rel="nofollow">http://www.audubon.org/news/moustached-kingfisher-photograph...</a>
The article's headline states, "Why a scientist killed a bird that hadn’t been seen in 50 years" and waits until well into the article to mention, "Filardi stressed that, among Guadalcanal locals, the bird is known to be 'unremarkably common.'"<p>In this way, this article, which is trying to explain why the bird was killed, seems to recreate the problems that led to people being mad in the first place: giving the impression that this is a rare bird that no one had seen in 50 years and burying the fact that this isn't true. The majority of this article makes it seem like this was a bird that no one had seen in years when that simply isn't the case. It is just that no scientist had seen it in years. Big difference.