Cecil the Lion was too old and shooting him was the right thing to do. This is the controversial view of the professional hunter at the centre of the storm that has angered animal lovers around the world. Boasting of 23 years' experience, Theo Bronkhorst saidCecil, the 13-year-old lion he hunted down for his American client last month, would not have had much longer to live. Cecil was a star attraction among tourists in Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest national park."We are talking about a lion that was 13 years old. He was on his last legs and if any animal had to be shot, it was that aged lion," Bronkhorst told the Sunday Times in an interview in Bulawayo.The owner of the family-owned Bushman Safaris, Bronkhorst defended the kill: "It would have been - in my view - wrong to have shot a younger male, when this one was at the end of his lifespan. So I believe that we did the right thing, but at no time did we know that it was a famous lion called Cecil. We could just see that it was an old lion."mini_story_image_hleft1Meanwhile, Jericho, Cecil’s brother, is not dead, a researcher monitoring the pride said, contradicting media reports that the lion had been killed.Yesterday the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force posted on Facebook that Jericho had been killed at 4pm.But Brent Stapelkamp, field researcher for the Hwange Lion Research Project, said: “He looks alive and well to me. All I have really is Jericho’s satellite GPS data from his collar. He sends me a GPS location every two hours. I’ve been looking at that on a satellite image."He moved 179 metres between 6.06pm and 8.06pm and then nine metres between 8.06pm and 10.06pm. To me that’s normal for a relaxed lion in the cool evening. He’s walked a bit, he’s flopped down. That’s typical of a cat that’s just rolling around and relaxed.”Stapelkamp said no lion was shot yesterday. “National Parks apparently released a statement to say they’ve arrested another landowner for a hunting incident. But I believe that was somewhere around the time that Cecil was shot.“I’m going to go check Jericho physically in the morning and then we ’re going to post photographs of him or whatever his status is on our Wild Crew website first thing, as soon as I’ve got them, so people can log on and see.”Earlier yesterday, Zimbabwe’s parks authority imposed an indefinite ban on big game hunting outside HwangeThe White House is to review a public petition to extradite Walter Palmer, the American client who paid about $50, 000 (about R635, 000) to shoot Cecil with a crossbow, paving the way for the dentist to be sent back to Africa to face charges.mini_story_image_hright2The petition has exceeded 100, 000 signatures and officials said it was now up to the US Justice Department to respond to the extradition order.Celebrities ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Cara Delevingne have expressed their revulsion at the hunt.Schwarzenegger posted an image on Instagram of himself in his heyday with two of his bodybuilding trophies juxtaposed with a picture of a lion."These are trophies. This is not," he said, referring to the lion.The hunters have been accused of luring Cecil out of the national reserve onto private land at night with bait and shooting him, despite the fact that he was collared.Bronkhorst appeared before a court in Hwange charged with conducting an illegal hunt of the lion this week.Out on $1000 bail, Bronkhorst has handed in all his travel documents and has to report to the police in Bulawayo three times a week. The trial against him is set to start on Wednesday and, if found guilty, he faces a jail term or a maximum fine of $20000.Speaking to the Sunday Times, Bronkhorst mused on how his life had taken a turn for the worse since the killing of Cecil on July 1 - the lion he admitted he had never heard of until the media frenzy. His family had not been spared either as hate speech and death threats had been hurled at them.Bronkhorst said the media hype around Cecil, which, as a collared lion, was part of research work by Oxford University, had been blown out of proportion."For a lion to be given a name is so wrong. It's not a zoo animal, it's a wild animal and ... we just happened to shoot the wrong lion, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and it happened to be a lion called Cecil," he said.story_article_left1Zimbabwe has called for Palmer to be extradited to face poaching charges, which could carry a lengthy prison sentence.The move came as it emerged that Palmer could also face a potential five-year jail term in the US and a $20000 fine for breaching the Lacey Act, which enforces the legal protection for endangered species across the world.Zimbabwean environment minister Oppah Muchinguri said Palmer was a "foreign poacher" who had financed an illegal hunt of Cecil, an "iconic attraction" at Hwange National Park.Palmer, who has gone into hiding, said in a statement that he believed the hunt was legal.Bronkhorst told The Daily Telegraph that the pair had been "devastated" when they realised Cecil was wearing a radio collar because he was part of an academic study by Oxford.However, Palmer reportedly told his escort afterwards to find him a large elephant to shoot...