Xanda, the son of Cecil the Lion, has been shot dead by a big game hunter. The shooting just two years after Cecil was shot and killed by Walter Palmer, an American big game hunter.
According to The Telegraph, Xanda, a six-year-old, was killed just outside the Hwange National Park in north west Zimbabwe.
Xanda’s death was discovered because he was wearing an electronic collar. The collar fitted by researchers to monitor his movements in the area.
via The Telegraph:
When the Zimbabwean professional hunter on the shoot, Richard Cooke from RC Safaris, discovered the dead lion had a collar, he handed it back to the researchers.
Andrew Loveridge from the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, which has a team supplying and fixing collars which monitor the lions in the Hwange National Park, said: “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.
“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.”
Furthermore, Loveridge said he hopes for the creation of a 5km exclusion zone around the Hwange National Park. This way, Loveridge says, hunters would no longer accidentally shoot collared lions that wander outside the boundary of the Park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyNp-k0VXdM
About Cecil The Lion
On July 1, 2015, Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game hunter, wounded, tracked and reportedly killed Ceil with a rifle. Cecil was 13 years old when killed. Palmer had a permit and was not charged with any crime.
Five months after Cecil’s death, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service added two subspecies of lion, in India and western and central Africa, to the endangered species list.
Wayne Pacelle, the CEO of the Humane Society, said Cecil had “changed the atmospherics on the issue of trophy hunting around the world.”
