Cecil the lion’s son has just been killed by hunters!

If you remember the news roughly two years ago, the killing of Cecil the lion was much debated in the media. The 13 year old lion was killed by the hunter Walter Palmer on 1 July 2015 after over 48 hours of pain from a previous hunting attempt. Walter had to pay over $50,000 for the permit to hunt the lion, and all this sparked a lot of debate over the ethical aspect of permit hunting of rare and endangered animals, and people even protested the killing.

An image of Cecil, 5 years before he was shot and killed. Image by Flickr user Daughter#3, posted with the cc-by-sa-2.0.

At the time of the hunting, the Southwest African lion (Panthera leo bleyenberghi) was not considered an endangered (sub)species by the United States, making it legal to hunt for Americans, but only five months later the United States Fish and Wildlife Service added it to the endangered species list. This has since made it more difficult for Americans to hunt this subspecies, and some people think the huge uproar of the Cecil killing was part of the reason why they were added to the list.

Cecil’s son has been killed

Despite getting the subspecies added to the endangered species list in the US, Cecil’s 6-year old son Xanda was shot and killed on July 7 2017. Xanda was hunted down by a group of private hunters just outside of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, and the identity of the hunters are not known at the moment. If the hunters are American, they could potentially have to face criminal charges upon returning to the United States because the lion subspecies has been added to the endangered species list.

Xanda was one of 550 lions in the Hwange National Park, so his death should not have any big ecological impacts. Still, he was a big lion with a beautiful mane, so it’s sad to hear that he has been killed. No one really knows exactly how many Southwest African lions there are left in the world, and the IUCN has not yet made an assessment of their probability of going extinct.

How do you feel about trophy hunting?

I wonder if the killing of Cecil’s son will lead to as much uproar and public debate as it did with the killing of Cecil himself, but in my opinion we should always keep discussing the ethical issue. I think most people are against the killing of rare or endangered species, especially if it’s just for fun (and not for providing food; which in my opinion is a much better reason). However, park owners that license kills for their animals often argue that the money from these hunts are used for conservation programs to protect the entire species. A license can easily cost over $50,000, and I see their point when they argue that they can protect lots of other lions with this money. Still, it is okay to kill one animal to save many others?

How do you feel about trophy hunting of rare or endangered animals? Let’s get a discussion going in the comment section!

About the author

Hi, I’m @valth! I live in Norway with my wife, our baby, and our two dogs, one of which is seen wearing a bow tie in the profile picture!

I am very passionate about nature and biology, and have been studying ecology for a few years now. My passions are mostly within conservation biology, mycology (the studies of mushrooms), botany, animal behavior and general microbiology. I really enjoy both the theoretical aspect, as well as the more practical aspect of biology, and I spend about as much time in front of biology textbooks as I do spend on finding and identifying plant, mushroom and animal species in the forests.

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