Cecil, and the other lions in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, live in a “free roam” zone, which means they cannot be hunted. So Walter James Palmer, wanting one of those lions as a trophy, and having paid $50,000, elicited the help of two locals. Together, they tied a dead animal to a car as bait, parked it just outside Hwange, and waited for the lion.

Palmer wounded Cecil with an arrow. The injured, terrified animal hid and suffered for 40 hours until Palmer and his two fellow assassins found him and shot him with a rifle. Then they skinned him and removed his head. They also tried to destroy the tracking collar that Cecil had been fitted with, knowing that they were in trouble.

The outrage, disgust, and hatred for what this Minnesota dentist did has come from all over the world. Today, Palmer put out a reprehensible statement which said, in part, “I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion.” Which pretty much amounts to, Oops, wrong lion.

Murdering an exquisite and endangered animal is not an activity. Soccer is an activity. This was cold-blooded murder, as were all his other “kills” — a bear, a rhino, a cougar, to name just a few. And he didn’t “take” the lion — he is responsible for a horrible, gruesome end to a life that was supposed to be protected.

This is not an isolated incident. Far from it. Canned hunts are big business. There are more Walter Palmers out there than most of us want to know about. But we need to know about them, because they aren’t going to change. Something died in them a long time ago — humanity, compassion, decency are extinct in people like this.

Sometimes it takes one incident to propel people to address the bigger issue. In this case, it is to ask why the hunting and killing of animals who are endangered for many different reasons is allowed at all. A century ago, roughly 200,000 lions wandered across Africa; now there are less than 30,000, and their fate is a fragile one. No one knows what will happen to Cecil’s family now. He led two prides — six lionesses and 12 cubs — with another male, Jericho. Jericho will be unable, on his own, to protect the two prides.

I pray this isn’t a quick news story. I pray that an example is made of Walter Palmer, that serious charges are brought against him,  and that serious change is discussed going forward from here. The people who feel just fine about the “activity” of slaughtering beautiful and endangered animals will never be rehabilitated. They will never transform into sensitive human beings who believe that they are meant to be stewards of this earth. It isn’t in them. Their blood runs cold and their hearts are hard as stone.The rest of us have to close ranks and stop them from killing.