The international furore over the killing of Cecil the lion has forced mankind again to wrestle with its conscience.

What Walter Palmer, the American dentist by day and hunter by night, set into motion on July 1 when the popular black-maned lion was lured away from his Zimbabwean national park and slain is a tug-o-war over the morality of killing.

Killing for sport; killing for fun; killing for necessity.

That the prize trophy in this instance should be the “King of the Jungle” has led to outcry, with authorities in Zimbabwe pondering extradition, while hunting proponents have hit back by saying that the bleeding hearts have gone over the top in their persecution of a medical professional, albeit one who has more animal heads in his trophy cabinet than he has wisdom teeth.

Sir Roger Moore, he of James Bond fame, is among the most high-profile accusers who believe a serious wrong has been committed.

Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Sir Roger said: “Clearly, he’s gunning his way through the animal kingdom, and who among us feels that we live in a civilised society while he’s on the loose? He must be stopped and brought to justice.”

For now, Dr Palmer has suspended his practice in Minneapolis. The abuse he has received, coupled with acts of vandalism at his place of employment have made it impossible for him to see his patients with any regularity. Those who retort “serves him right” can argue that Cecil will never again see the prides for whom he was responsible, his absence rendering as many as 30 young and female lions vulnerable.

The fallout from the international exposure is that Africa must now take further stock of the role it plays in effectively selling out to rich foreigners. African wildlife has long been a hunting tourist attraction, with $201 million in estimated revenue generated in sub-Saharan countries. More than half the earnings go to South Africa, where 5,000 lions are bred to be hunted — almost in Hunger Games fashion.

Again, Bob Marley’s “Don’t gain the world and lose your soul” comes to mind. Kenya decided as long ago as 1977 that hunting should be banned.

The East African country, which boasts some of the most popular safaris on the continent, has suffered for the loss of potential revenue, no doubt, but its continued stance has been applauded by animal rights groups.

While poaching continues to be a problem in all African nations, Kenya boasts $800 million in revenue annually from safaris, a figure that adds significantly to the national economy. In addition, recent revelations of egregious poaching violations in Tanzania and South Africa — two of the largest hunting profiteers on the continent — show that even countries that encourage trophy hunting are not immune from illegal hunting.

In recent times Botswana and Zambia have joined Kenya in outlawing forms of hunting owing to the diminishment of certain species, which would affect tourism.

“The shooting of wild game purely for sport and trophies is no longer compatible with our commitment to preserve local fauna as a national treasure, which should be treated as such,” said Ian Kaham, the President of Botswana, in his state of the nation address three years ago.

Likewise, Sylvia Masebo, then Zambian tourism minister, defended her country’s ban on hunting lions and leopards. “Tourists come to Zambia to see the lion and if we lose the lion, we will be killing our tourism industry,” she said.

In December 2012, Costa Rica strengthened its grip as Western society’s champion for the environment by becoming the first Latin-American country to ban sport hunting and trapping — inside and outside protected areas. The Central American nation is one of the most biodiverse in the world and has 25 per cent of its land protected as national parks or reserves.

But theirs is an example that is not followed, particularly in the United States where hunting is rampant and where the gun control argument has taxed Congress since long before Barack Obama had the audacity to dream.

If the only genuine defence for hunting is conservation, and it takes rich foreigners at as much as $50,000 a pop to invade Africa to “educate” them of that, then surely that must be outweighed by leaving animals in the wild to determine for themselves how their destinies should be shaped — as nature intended.

Cecil was not in the wild, it needs repeating; he was tricked into wandering outside his protected zone. Nor was he a wild one.

For more on that, perhaps it is best to close with the man who took the last known photograph of him: Brent Stapelkamp, a researcher with Oxford University’s lion project in the Hwange National Park, whence Cecil was lured.

“He was confident, but not aggressive,” Mr Stapelkamp said. “He was not really playful; more regal. He was a lion and he knew it, and everyone else be damned — he was the biggest cat on the block, and didn’t have to be playful.

“You could get to two or three photographs of him, without him moving, and he was used to safari vehicles. He was a total lion experience.”