Cecil's brother alive and well, but another lion reportedly shot

A second lion was reportedly killed by a foreign tourist in Zimbabwe just two days after an American dentist killed the country's most famous lion, called Cecil.  But contrary to many media reports, Cecil's brother Jericho remains alive and well.

|
Andy Loveridge/Wildlife Conservation Research Unit via AP
In this undated photo provided by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Cecil the lion rests in Hwange National Park, in Hwange, Zimbabwe. Two Zimbabweans arrested for illegally hunting and killing Cecil appeared in court Wednesday, July 29, 2015. The head of Zimbabwe’s safari association said the killing was unethical and that it couldn’t even be classified as a hunt, since the lion killed by an American dentist was lured into the kill zone. Two days later, another lion was reportedly killed by another foreign tourist in Zimbabwe.

The brother of Cecil, the lion killed in Zimbabwe by an American hunter last month, is not dead, a researcher monitoring the pride told Reuters, contradicting media reports that Jericho had been killed.

"He looks alive and well to me as far as I can tell," said Brent Stapelkamp, field researcher for the Hwange Lion Research Project which is monitoring the lion with a GPS tag.

A group called the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force posted on its Facebook page that Jericho had been killed at 4 p.m. on Saturday, a report picked up by some Western news media that was rapidly spread on Twitter.

That generated a furious reaction on the social networking site where animal lovers had already been expressing their fury at the killing on July 1 of Cecil, a rare black-maned lion that was a familiar sight at Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park.

Stapelkamp said readings from Jericho's GPS tag indicated he was moving around as usual and appeared to be with a female.

"When I heard that report, I had a look on the computer and his movements look regular. He sent a GPS point from his collar from 8:06 p.m. (1806 GMT). Everything looks fine," Stapelkamp told Reuters.

Earlier on Saturday, Zimbabwe's parks authority imposed an indefinite ban on big game hunting outside the national park from which Cecil was lured before being killed on July 1.

A source at the parks agency told Reuters a second lion had been killed illegally by a foreign hunter in Zimbabwe on July 3. That has not been confirmed by officials.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Cecil's brother alive and well, but another lion reportedly shot
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2015/0801/Cecil-s-brother-alive-and-well-but-another-lion-reportedly-shot
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe