I find all these articles that try to compare and measure sympathy and emotion as pointless. People are comparing the outpouring of grief for Cecil to apathy towards human killings and inhuman treatment of animals in the meat industry. A person can be severely depressed if they lose a dog, and another can show no emotion when they lose a parent. You can't compare human emotion because it's not always rational.
In this specific case though, I would also argue given the declining numbers of lions, the anger is justified.
I tend to think that human emotion was not rational by definition (and by not rational I mean uncorrelated not negatively correlated). Of course "not rational" is not synonymous of bad or superfluous.
In this specific case though, I would also argue given the declining numbers of lions, the anger is justified.