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Good morning. There were two news stories about animals yesterday. The first was that the intrepid Joanna Lumley appears to have won a moral victory in her long campaign against animal sacrifices in Nepal. The head of the Temple of Gadhimai, the Goddess of power, has said, ‘The time has come to transform an old tradition….to replace killing and violence with peaceful worship and celebration.’ If the decision sticks, up to half a million buffaloes, goats, pigeons and mice will be spared in the coming years. The other story is about the killing of Cecil the Zimbabwean lion by an American big game hunter. We have heard how Cecil was lured through the night with dead meat then shot with a cross bow. He seems to have escaped wounded but was eventually found and despatched with a gun. The dead lion was then skinned and beheaded. For myself, I don’t believe in animals having legal rights. I’m not opposed to killing animals for food. I think it is right to protect people from, say, sharks or hungry tigers, even over aggressive seagulls (though I suspect that’s more to do with our bad litter habits than it is with psychopathic birds). I can accept the principle of culling, to prevent the spread of disease or if a particular species is wreaking havoc on others. The moral question for me about killing animals is, who benefits? The authorities in Nepal have come to the view that the Goddess of Power no longer needs to be appeased by animal blood. In the case of Cecil the only beneficiaries are those who accepted the hunter’s fees and the hunter himself who was perhaps looking forward to the satisfaction of an another animal head mounted on the wall or splayed out with the skin turned into a rug. The hunter has apologised because he now realises that Cecil was not any old lion, but a lion who had been tagged for years and was known and loved to many in the Hwange National Park in which he lived. But he still claims to have acted responsibly and legally, although doubt is now being cast on whether those who helped him did. I know there are those who believe that man was given dominion over the creatures of the earth and they might argue that we can do what we like with animals. But the scriptures also teach the need for humility and good stewardship. Even the thug Samson in the Book of Judges who tore a lion apart with his bare hands had the excuse that the lion attacked him first. The Nepalese worshippers have changed their sacred tradition but the hunter of Cecil appears to believe that as long as procedure is followed it is OK to kill animals for sport. I don’t know about you but the Joanna Lumley story lifts the heart this morning and the fate of Cecil the lion does the opposite.