Cecil the Lion’s son, Xanda was recently killed near a Zimbabwe park, according to officials.
Xanda, one of the cubs of Cecil the Lion – the highly regarded lion that was killed by a Minnesota dentist, was shot and killed just outside of the Hwange National Park in northwest Zimbabwe.
The location wasn’t far from where his father, Cecil, was killed in 2015. Xanda was six years old.
“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,” staff from the national park wrote in a Facebook post.
The Hwange National Park said Cooke is also the same hunter who killed Xanda’s brother in 2015 when he was only four years old.
“We can’t believe that now, 2 years since Cecil was killed, that his oldest Cub #Xanda has met the same fate,” park officials added.
According to the Telegraph, the park discovered his death because Xanda was wearing a special satellite collar to monitor and track his movements in the park. When the hunter discovered he killed a lion wearing a collar, he returned the collar back to researchers at the park.
Andrew Loveridge of the Department of Zoology at Oxford University and part of the team that supplied the electronic collars said Xanda was fitted for the collar in October 2016.
“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,” he told The Telegraph.
Loveridge also commends Cooke for returning the collar and says he’s 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.”
Although several reports are pointing in the direction of Cooke as the killer, The Washington reports he was not the shooter.
Officials from the Hwange National Park have not yet confirmed these reports.
