This is just one more in an amazing series of silly, or perhaps mindless actions that continue to "snowball" through the museum world. Was not Kenya at the time a British territory? Therefore, those involved British citizens, and that would make them by definition Brito-Afro-Kenyans or mirated Brito-Indo-Kenyans. By the same logic, the lions were "Royal" denizens and subject to "Royal" control (shooting because of their eating habits). How they ended up in Chicago must be another interesting tale (no pun intended). Perhaps the Field Museum should charge taxidermy fees and storage fees with interest.If the lions are adult lions, they must be rather large animals. I suspect storage in a Chicago storage facility must be on the order of $100 per month or $1200 per year. So, if the lions have been effectively stored for 120 years or so--gee, that's a lot of money the Field Museum has due.

Finally, I suspect that the taxidermy of the skins was done with a liberal use of arsenic as a preservative. If this is the case, the decontamination cost for the lions might add another substantial burden for the modern Kenyan government to pay. It might be far more economical for the Kenyans, if indeed lions are what they need, to advertise at all the world's zoos that have lions, and ask for two animals that die from natural causes and salvage their pelts and do a new exhibit in Kenya. The lions do not have to be labled as THE Tsavo lions, but just as lions similar to the lions of Tsavo. And everyone would be happy.

I'll concede that Western museums have rather doubtful legal claims to many of the artifacts in their possession, however some might have not survived intact if they had remained in situ.