Zimbabwe suspends hunting
Group claims a second lion, Jericho, is also dead, but a researcher at wildlife refuge says it’s not true.
harare, zimbabwe» Zimbabwe has suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in an area where Cecil, a lion popular with tourists, was killed by an American hunter.
The move by wildlife officials came amid conflicting reports about the fate of another popular lion.
A report on the Facebook page of an advocacy group called the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said that Jericho — the companion to Cecil, often referred to as his brother — was killed Saturday and that it would provide more details when they were available.
But lion researcher Brent Stapelkamp at Hwange National Park said that Jericho’s radio collar indicated he was alive and moving around after the time of his reported death.
Stapelkamp said that when Cecil’s carcass was finally found after he was lured out of the wildlife reserve to be killed by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer, it was a headless, skinless skeleton the vultures had been picking at for about a week.
Conservationists decided the most natural thing was to leave the bones where they were for hyenas to finish off, said Stapelkamp, part of a team that had tracked and studied Cecil for nine years.
Stapelkamp darted Cecil and put his last GPS collar on in October. He was probably the last person to get up close before Palmer used a bow and a gun to kill the now-famous lion with the bushy black mane, its head and skin eventually cut off as trophies. Stapelkamp had first alerted authorities that something might be wrong after Cecil’s GPS collar stopped sending a signal.
The killing of the big cat in early July has unleashed global outrage, sending Palmer into hiding back home in suburban Minneapolis, leading to the arrest of the local hunter he employed, and prompting Zimbabwe’s environment minister to say the southern African country would seek Palmer’s extradition to face charges.
Stapelkamp shares the anger, not just because of the demise of Cecil. Also because, he said, it’s not the first time a lion has been killed illegally around the park in northwestern Zimbabwe, a reserve known for its rich wildlife. About a dozen lions in the region were killed illegally in recent years, Stapelkamp said, and no one was caught.
“I think this was just the final straw,” Stapelkamp told The Associated Press in a phone interview from the Hwange reserve. “Everyone locally just thought, no ways, we’re not letting anyone get away with this anymore.”
Cecil had an intriguing story, making him a celebrity in Hwange. He arrived as a kind of lion refugee, alone and wandering after being displaced from another territory. Cecil befriended Jericho, and together they grew and watched over two prides, one with three lionesses and seven cubs, and another with three lionesses.
Cecil’s killing will have an impact on the area, explained Stapelkamp, a field researcher for an Oxford University study on lions.
Assuming he is still alive, Jericho may not be able to hold their territory alone and could be chased away by rival lions. Unprotected, the lionesses and cubs would then be under threat and also move away or be killed. Safari operators who invested millions of dollars in the area would lose one of their biggest attractions for tourists.
“They’re burning fire breaks. They’re grading roads. They’re pumping water,” Stapelkamp said. “They’re spending a lot of money in the management of lions, and then someone just draws it across the railway lines having not paid a penny in its management and shoots it and runs away with its skin. It’s unacceptable.”
Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Authority said Saturday it is investigating the killing of another lion in April that may have been illegal.
Stapelkamp, unsure of the details of Cecil’s killing, described the usual tactics of hunters to draw an animal onto private land and out of the park. The two areas are separated by a rail line. Hunters shoot a zebra or giraffe and hang it on a tree — the main bait. They then drag the intestines of that animal, “something that really smells,” Stapelkamp said, up and down the park boundary behind a vehicle. Sometimes they’ll even play the sounds of a dying buffalo over a loudspeaker.
The lion “comes across that scent trail, and it leads him straight to this bait,” Stapelkamp said. “It rushes in for a free meal, and they’re waiting ... and they kill him like that.”
Even on private land, this hunt was still illegal, Stapelkamp said, because no hunting quotas for lions were issued in the region this year.