Why did the death of Cecil the lion cause such an uproar?

Analysis of the huge news and online response to his death could offer conservationists an opportunity to turn the 'Cecil moment' into a 'Cecil movement', reports Conservation Magazine

When the story of Cecil the lion's death at the hands of an American hunter hit the media, the global response was "the largest reaction in the history of wildlife conservation," according to a new paper. Researchers from Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (or WildCRU, the same organization that had tracked the lion since 2009) analyzed the traditional and social media response to the hunting incident. They found that a combination of elements in the story may have made it go viral in a different way than the average internet sensation. And conservationists may subsequently have a golden opportunity to transform the "Cecil moment" into a "Cecil movement".

To recap the sequence of events around Cecil's death: Around 10pm on 1 July 2015, a hunter from Minnesota named Walter Palmer sent an arrow into the side of a 13-year-old male African lion nicknamed 'Cecil' on privately owned property outside of Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park. This arrow failed to kill the beast, but the second one, shot some 11 hours later, did.