Killing of Cecil’s son highlights peril facing African lions

Xanda, who was wearing a GPS collar so researchers could track him, was killed on or around July 7 just outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park and the shooter is a client of Zimbabwean professional hunter Richard Cooke, a group called World Heritage Species said on Facebook. Group members include Brent Stapelkamp, a researcher who monitors lions in Hwange park, where Cecil and Xanda lived.

“Although the hunt was reportedly legal (all the proper papers were in order, Xanda was over the age of 5, and he was outside the boundaries of the park), Cooke has refused to divulge the identity of his client. Cooke also led the hunt in 2015 that killed Cecil’s other son,” the group said.

Efforts to reach Cooke by email and phone were not immediately successful.

Zimbabwe would not name the person who shot Xanda because doing so would invite retribution and loss of business for the hunt operator, an official said.

“We don’t have any laws prohibiting the hunt of collared animals. We are in the process of crafting a law to protect such animals,” said Tinashe Farawo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority. He said the hunter did not know that Xanda was collared, possibly because the device is not always visible under a male lion’s mane, and that the collar was returned to authorities.

Farawo said wild animals often wander outside unfenced areas of national parks in Zimbabwe, and the wildlife agency is struggling with human-animal conflict in areas surrounding parks.

Like Cecil, Xanda had been monitored by WildCRU, a group affiliated with the University of Oxford in Britain.

The World Heritage Species group said researchers “were aware that Xanda had been spending more time outside the park” and that the dead lion’s GPS collar was fitted in October.

Cecil was killed in a hunt in which he was illegally lured out of the wildlife park with bait and initially wounded by an arrow, according to authorities. The death unleashed an extraordinary outpouring of anger at Walter Palmer, the American dentist who shot the lion, and other foreigners who have travelled to Africa to kill wildlife.

Xanda had a pride with cubs, said the World Heritage Species group. It said “their safety and survival is now in jeopardy if a new male comes along and attempts to take over.”

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Associated Press writer Farai Mutsaka in Harare, Zimbabwe contributed.

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Follow Christopher Torchia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/torchiachris

Christopher Torchia, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Killing of Cecil’s son highlights peril facing African lions

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