Death of an Icon

As a rule, I don't usually follow news about celebrities. Too much gossip, not enough substance. But when, this past month, a certain famous individual passed away, I decided it was something worth talking about here. The "celebrity" in question here is Cecil, a 13-year-old male lion who lived in the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. He was considered one of the most famous individual animals in the park, and a popular tourist attraction. Then, on July 1st this year, he was shot by an American tourist.
Cecil's death generated a storm of controversy--not only about the legality of the killing itself, which the American and British governments have claimed was illegal, but also about the general morality of hunting top predators for sport. This has been a thorny subject for conservationists for decades, even more than the hunting of large herbivores.
By their very nature, top predators like lions are not common because their ecosystems can only support small numbers of them. This is, as ecologist Paul Colinvaux so eloquently put it, "why big fierce animals are rare." It goes without saying them that top predators are almost always the most vulnerable species in a given ecosystem to sudden change. Even a small decrease in their numbers can be catastrophic from an ecological perspective.
Fortunately, steps are being taken to curb the hunting of lions and other big predators. US senator Bob Menendez introduced the CECIL (Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing Importation of Large) Animals Act, named after Cecil himself, which declares it illegal to bring hunting trophies from the killings of endangered or potentially endangered species into the US without explicit permission from the US government. Lions are not officially endangered, but are declining at such a rate that they could be potentially uplisted in the near future, so the CECIL Animals Act would make hunting them less attractive.
Cecil may have died an untimely death, but in doing so he highlighted an important issue for the environmental movement. What role should hunting play in conservation, and is it ever a good thing?