Musician Ted Nugent - famous largely for a string of hits in the 1970s, predominantly in his native America - is the latest name to weigh in on the 'Cecil the Lion' controversy.

Nugent, however, is going firmly against the wave of condemnation against Walt Palmer, the Minnesota dentist that allegedly shot the lion in Zimbabwe. Replying to a Facebook post where a fan asked him his opinion, he replied:

"the whole story is a lie. It was a wild lion from a ‘park’ where hunting is legal & ESSENTIAL beyond the park borders. all animals reproduce every year & would run out of room/food to live w/o hunting. I will write a full piece on this joke asap. God are people stupid”

His stance might make more sense when you hear that he is a staunch Republican, a defender of Donald Trump, and a board member of the National Rifle Association, who previously courted controversy by calling President Obama a "sub-human mongrel."

Nugent is unsurprisingly a fan of animal hunting in general; responding to a later comment about how he asked about hunters keeping their kill as 'trophies', he wrote: "every hunt is meat sport trophy".

 

 

Nugent's "full piece" has yet to emerge, but no doubt it'll be as ignorant and ill-informed as his Facebook ripostes…