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Xanda, the oldest son of Cecil, was killed like his father by trophy hunters.

Son of Cecil the lion killed by trophy hunter
Six-year-old Xanda was shot and killed by hunters when he roamed outside the protected area of the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe

 Xanda, son of Cecil, in the Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. Photograph: Courtesy of Hwange National Park

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A son of Cecil the lion has been killed by trophy hunters in Zimbabwe, meeting the same fate as his father whose death in 2015 caused a global outcry.

Xanda, who was six years old and believed to have fathered a number of cubs himself, was shot just outside the Hwange National Park, not far from where Cecil died.

The trophy hunt was organised by Zimbabwean private hunter Richard Cooke but his clients, who may have paid tens of thousands of dollars, have not been revealed. Xanda was wearing a tracking collar, fitted by scientists led by Andrew Loveridge at Oxford University, who have studied the Hwange lions for many years.

“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,” Loveridge told the Daily Telegraph.

“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 six years old so it is all within the stipulated regulations,” Loveridge said.

He said he wanted a 5km no-hunting zone put in place around the Hwange National Park, to protect the lions that roam outside park. Cooke did not respond to requests for comment.

The Facebook group Lions of Hwange National Park said on Thursday that Xanda had been shot a few days ago: “Xanda has several young cubs. We can’t believe that now, two years since Cecil was killed, that his oldest cub has met the same fate.”

The death of Cecil the lion, killed by US dentist Walter Palmer, led to widespread criticism of the trophy hunting of lions, which has become a big business with the number killed tripling to 1,500 a year in the last decade. Lions have lost 90% of their overall population in the last century and only about 20,000 remain.

However, Prof David Macdonald, another of the Oxford team, told the Guardian in December that strictly regulated and sustainable hunting could provide valuable funds to protect lion habitats.

“It is unfathomable to me that there could be joy in killing them, but for me the priority is halting, indeed reversing, their decline,” he said. “Currently the evidence is that trophy hunting contributes to keeping hundreds of thousands of square kilometres available to lions and other wildlife.”

Cecil, who was 13 when killed, was believed to have had 13 surviving sons and daughters and 15 known grandcubs as of June 2016. Reply