Two years ago, there was a public uproar over the shooting and killing of Cecil the Lion—a well-known male Southwest African lion that was a major attraction at Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. A big game trophy hunter shot the cat.
Now, reports are saying that his son, Xanda, was shot and killed under similar circumstances just outside of Hwange National Park, reported The Telegraph on July 20.
Xanda, who was about 6 years old, was fitted with an electronic collar that had tracked his movements.
A Zimbabwean professional hunter, Richard Cooke, discovered that the lion had a collar, and he handed it back to researchers, according to the Telegraph.
“I fitted it last October. It was monitored almost daily and we were aware that Xanda and his pride was spending a lot of time out of the park in the last six months, but there is not much we can do about that,” Andrew Loveridge from the Department of Zoology at Oxford University told the paper.
“Richard Cooke is one of the ‘good’ guys. He is ethical and he returned the collar and communicated what had happened. His hunt was legal and Xanda was over 6 years old so it is all within the stipulated regulations,” he said.
Cooke’s client was the hunter who shot Xanda. The client may have paid some 40,000 pounds ($51,000) to shoot and kill Xanda.
In 2015, American recreational big-game hunter Walter Palmer killed Cecil, who was 13 when he was shot. His killing created an outrage among conservationists.
Lions of Hwange National Park wrote about Xanda’s killing on Facebook:
Today we heard that a few days ago, Xanda, the son of #CecilTheLion has been shot on a trophy hunt by Zimbabwe PH Richard Cooke. Cooke also killed Xanda’s brother in 2015, he was only about 4 years old then. Xanda is still a young father at 6.2 years old and has several young cubs. We can’t believe that now, 2 years since Cecil was killed, that his oldest Cub #Xanda has met the same fate.
When will the lions of Hwange National Park be left to live out their years as wild born free lions should ... ?
