Muchinguri, a senior member of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party, described Cecil – a black-maned lion well-known to foreign tourists in the Hwange National Park – as an “iconic attraction”.
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Cecil the lion’s story was given a further twist today following conflicting reports his brother Jericho had been shot dead by poachers in Zimbabwe.
But researcher Brent Stapelkamp, field researcher for the Hwange Lion Research Project which is monitoring the lion with a Global Positioning System tag, told Reuters the reports were wrong.
The Zimbabwean government has requested the extradition of the US dentist Walter Palmer, who killed the southern African country’s most celebrated lion, Cecil.
Experts anxious that Jericho and Cecil’s cubs might be killed or run off by rival lions, but until now, Jericho had been defending the pride in the absence of his brother. Both Palmer and his hunting guide, Theo Bronkhorst, have said it was an accident and they didn’t see the tracking collar he was wearing.
Two Zimbabweans, a professional hunter and a private farm owner, accused of involvement in Palmer’s hunt, appeared in court Tuesday for illegal poaching. The hunter had since left Zimbabwe, but police had recovered the lion’s head and carcass. “We want him (Palmer) to be extradited and tried in Zimbabwe”, she said, as quoted in a report by Xinhua.
Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Authority also said it was investigating the killing of another lion in April that may have been illegal, and said it only received the information this week.
Palmer said in a statement that he did not know Cecil was a popular figure in the Hwange national park when he killed him.
“We are absolutely heartbroken”, the statement reported by US media outlets said.
Stapelkamp told The Guardian that he would look for Jericho tomorrow morning. Cecil was wounded first by a crossbow, then tracked for hours before being shot dead with a gun, at which point he was skinned and beheaded. In a note to his patients, he wrote: “I understand and respect that not everyone shares the same views on hunting”.
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The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe said Friday that it does not comment on extradition matters and the Zimbabwe Embassy in Washington said it had yet to receive instructions.
