Lion cubs fathered by Cecil, the celebrated lion shot dead in Zimbabwe, may already have been killed by a rival male lion and even if they were still alive there was nothing conservationists could do to protect them, a conservation charity has warned.
The killing of the 13-year-old lion on 1 July by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer, who is thought to have paid $50,000 [£32,000] to take part in the hunt, has sparked world-wide condemnation.
Two men arrested for their part in the hunt, Theo Bronkhorst and Honest Ndlovu, appeared at the Hwange magistrate’s court on Wednesday charged with poaching offences. Zimbabwean police said they were also looking for Palmer, who is believed to have since returned to the US, and has said he thought the hunt was legal.
The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said it was concerned for the fate of Cecil’s 12 cubs. “The next lion in the hierarchy, Jericho, will most likely kill all Cecil’s cubs so that he can insert his own bloodline into the females,” the chairman, Johnny Rodrigues, said.
He added: “It might have happened already because Cecil was killed back on 1 July. If Jericho finds that there is a pride of lions he might just take them on. When two males fight over a pride, the winner kills all the cubs and introduces his own bloodline.
“Letting nature take its course may be the most humane thing to do.”
Cecil is believed to have taken 40 hours to die after being shot by a bow when he was lured out of a national park with bait.
Rodrigues said there was no sanctuary in Zimbabwe to take in the cubs and that charities do not have sufficient resources to protect cubs in the wild.
“To keep them in the wild would be very hard. If we had unlimited resources we would go to the authorities and say ‘we know these cubs are going to die, can we remove them?’.
“Lack of funding means we can’t do that now. And there’s a whole system here that makes it hard to get anything done.”
Rodrigues welcomed the arrests, but claimed the authorities had only been prompted to act by the international outrage at Cecil’s killing.
He said: “I welcome the prosecution but this has been going on for years. Cecil is the 24th collared animal to be killed after being lured out of the park. I think they are being prosecuted because of the international attention. So many things like this have happened before and Zimbabwe turned a blind eye. But now Zimbabwe needs tourism so they have to clean up their house.”
He added: “We want to use Cecil’s legend to get moratorium on all lion hunting. Otherwise they are going to be extinct by 2050. I’ve been trying to draw attention to this for the last 16 years and it’s only coming to fruition now.”
“What concerns us is that the areas have been turned into lion breeding farms. There are 15 lion breeders who actually breed lions for hunting. We want to stop this industry.”
The Born Free foundation estimates that the number of lions in Africa has declined from 80,000 in 1980 to 25,000 today.
Peter Johnstone, who owns Rosslyn Safaris, one of the longest-running hunting safari companies in Zimbabwe, defended big game hunting. “Sport hunting doesn’t reduce the [number of] animals. Trophy hunting is not the problem, it is habitat loss,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme.
Johnstone, whose company offers hunting trips with bows as well as rifles, said he could not defend the way Cecil was lured out of the protected area. But he added: “It is all very well being sentimental about Cecil. But he was an old lion. It surprises me that he hadn’t been killed by other male lions or hyenas. He happened to go onto a hunting area and got shot. People who have got businesses in that park are making a huge nonsense out of it ... Wildlife hunting is a good thing. It should be supported wholeheartedly.”