Jericho, ‘Brother’ of Cecil the Lion, Is Alive: Wildlife Officials

Stewart Dorrington, operator of Melorani Safaris in South Africa, said Seski had hunted on his property and all his actions there were “perfectly legal”.

Conservationists decided the most natural thing was to leave the bones where they were for hyenas to finish off, said Brent Stapelkamp, a lion researcher and part of a team that had tracked and studied Cecil for nine years.

Based on a report made by the Chairman for the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force Johnny Rodrigues, Jericho has been illegally slain by a hunter in the Hwange National Park.

CNN later said that the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force confirmed Jericho had indeed been killed.

The erroneous reports of Jericho’s death elicited strong reactions on the heels of the killing of his ally, Cecil. They say he did not have authorization to kill the lion named Cecil a month ago. Zimbabwe is seeking his extradition.

But Mr Bronkhorst said last Friday they had “shot an old male lion that I believed was past its breeding age…”

“Mistaken Identity – Jericho is in fact alive and well and has adopted Cecil’s cubs”, the ZCTF wrote in a Facebook post.

Beth Allgood of the global Fund for Animal Welfare, said, “We’ve done a poll and 70 percent of Americans would pay to see lions in the wild and only 6 percent would pay to hunt lions in the wild”.

National Parks spokeswoman Caroline Washaya Moyo said Seski had provided his name and other identifying information for a government database when he came for the hunt.

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.

According to ABC News on Saturday, yet another lion killing followed suit not so long after Cecil was shot by dentist Walter Palmer in July. Palmer is reported to have paid $50,000 to hunt and kill Cecil, an iconic black-maned lion.

In addition, bow and arrow hunts have been suspended unless they are approved by the head of the director of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, the organization said.

In the meantime Dr. Walter Palmer has reportedly contacted for the federal agencies regarding the investigation that they have launched regarding the killing of the lion.

Zimbabwe has called on the United States to extradite Palmer. After tracking the 13-year-old lion for about 40 hours, Palmer is alleged to have killed the animal with a gun.

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.