A year later, feds still investigating Twin Cities dentist who killed Cecil the lion

One year after a beloved lion was killed in an African hunt carried out by a Twin Cities marksman, setting off an international firestorm, federal authorities said Thursday they are still investigating the death of Cecil the lion.

Walter Palmer, of Eden Prairie, was on a safari on July 1, 2015, in Zimbabwe when he felled with an arrow the black-maned 13-year-old male lion, which was part of an Oxford University conservation project and was a popular tourist attraction.

The nighttime killing unleashed global outrage and forced Palmer to temporarily close his Bloomington dental practice for two months as demonstrators and news crews descended on his business.

All potential criminal charges in Zimbabwe were erased when the wife of President Robert Mugabe said in August that Palmer would not be held responsible. Palmer, in an interview in September with the Star Tribune and the Associated Press, denied breaking laws in either Zimbabwe or the United States and said he relied on his guides for keeping the hunt legal.

However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has yet to wrap up its investigation, which it opened to see whether the veteran big-game hunter violated the Lacey Act, a federal law used to prosecute illegal trafficking in a wide range of wildlife.

"Yes, the investigation is still ongoing," said Gavin Shire, chief spokesman for the USFWS. "There's really nothing more we can say about it at this time."

Shire offered no hint of when the agency might complete its investigation.

Minneapolis attorney Joe Friedberg, who has acted as an unpaid consultant to Palmer in this case, said on the dentist's behalf Thursday that he finds it surprising that a federal inquiry was still on the table.

"I don't know what it would be about," said Friedberg, noting that Zimbabwe's decision not to charge Palmer "should have put this to bed."

Another representative of Palmer's said that once the dental practice resumed operating it experienced no falloff as a result of the publicity.

Cecil was baited and the hunt was conducted on private land where, some authorities in Zimbabwe have said, there was no permit to kill a lion.

Charges were filed against the professional guide, Theo Bronkhorst, and landowner Honest Trymore Ndlovu, on whose land Palmer shot the lion. Neither case has been resolved.