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Change.org Trends: Campaigning for Cecil and His Lion Size Legacy
A global movement has exploded following the shooting of Cecil the lion. As the world mourned, millions of people took to Change.org to ask for appropriate punishment for big game hunters and stamp out trophy hunting.
Over 100 related petitions have been created specifically about Cecil. The largest petition, Justice for Cecil the iconic collared lion slaughtered by trophy hunter in Zimbabwe!, has over 1 million supporters.
This map shows signatures globally on the petition from the time it was created through August 5, 2015:
196 countries are represented among supporters of the Justice for Cecil petition, and the top 10 most engaged countries are:
- United States
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Philippines
- Mexico
- Argentina
- India
- France
- Brazil
While many petitions were inspired by Cecil’s death, people have shifted focus to fight big game hunting policies generally as well: in the past 2 months, nearly 600 petitions related to big game hunting were launched on Change.org. Many of these ask organizations and companies to ban big game hunting and the transportation of hunting trophies.
One of the most popular of these was declared a victory on Monday. Almost 400,000 supporters provoked Delta to ban the shipment of hunting trophies.
Now, thousands are calling on South African Airways (SAA) to immediately ban the shipment of hunting trophies. South African Airways announced a ban on the transportation of hunting trophies in April, but just 3 months later, the decision was reversed.
The petition was launched by Regina Fugate, a Cape Town resident passionate about wildlife photography, who says:
“We can make this change if we work together to show South African Airways it’s bad business to ship slaughtered wildlife.”
Here are some other petitions that protest big game hunting:
- Thomas Unise is asking President Obama for new laws to protect big game
- Jessica Barrett is asking Canadian officials to ban big game trophy importing in Canada
- Rebecca Byrne is asking the Council of the European Union to ban big game trophy importing in the European Union
- Lavinia Álvarez is asking the President of South Africa to stop lion hunting in Africa
- Alberto Gomez is asking the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to protect African Lions by classifying them as endangered species
Are you against big game hunting?