I think you have to also look at the human's ability for compassion. We only have so much energy that can be spent per day on compassion for things outside of our tribe is costly.
I think a good question is instead of having humans sporadically exert this energy each time something breaks through their firewalls, rightly setup to prevent over taxation of their systems, how do create a constant dialogue using small fragments of that same energy?
If you look at the BP oil spill(s) response, I think you see the same level of empathy for all kinds of animals, that do not closely resemble human, as you did with Cecil. Pictures of birds covered in oil, frogs and other far from human species.
These moments of compassion are short lived though as life continues to pull people's attentions away from the tragedy at hand to the next tragedy in the list. You can apply this to political movements as well. Human's compact and short attention spans create bubbles of movements. It takes long visions and stamina to really make change.