The son of Cecil the Lion, whose death two years ago sparked international outrage, was shot and killed by hunters in western Zimbabwe, in an incident eerily reminiscent of how his dad’s life ended.
The six-year-old lion, named Xanda, was killed outside of the Hwange National Park, according to The Telegraph.
Richard Cooke, who runs RC Safaris, discovered the dead lion and handed his electronic collar back to researchers. The names of the big-game trophy hunters were not released.
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The collar was fitted on Xanda in October to help researchers monitor his movements in the area.
“It was monitored almost daily, and we were aware that Xanda and his pride [were] 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, of the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, told The Telegraph.
Loveridge called Cooke “one of the ‘good’ guys” and praised him for returning the collar and informing the researchers of what happened.
Xanda’s death comes two years after Minnesota dentist Walter James Palmer killed the beloved lion Cecil — also near Hwange National Park. Palmer admitted to using a bow and arrow to kill the animal. The Telegraph reported the dentist was paid $65,000 to kill Cecil.
The global outrage over the lion’s death caused Palmer to go into hiding and forced him to shut down his dental office in Bloomington, Minnesota, for weeks as thousands of people sent him hate messages and threats.
The Zimbabwean government and police planned to charge the dentist with poaching in 2015, but eventually found Palmer did not break any hunting laws and cleared him of any wrongdoing.
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