One of Cecil the Lion’s cubs has been shot dead by a big game trophy hunter in Zimbabwe, just two years after his father was killed in similar circumstances.

The six-year-old lion named Xanda, who was in his prime, was killed just outside the Hwange National Park in north west Zimbabwe, not far from where Cecil was killed in 2015.

His death was discovered because Xanda was wearing an an electronic collar, fitted by researchers monitoring his movements in the area.

When the Zimbabwean professional hunter on the shoot, Richard Cooke from RC Safaris, discovered the dead lion had a collar, he handed it back to the researchers.

Andrew Loveridge from the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, which has a team supplying and fixing collars which monitor the lions in the Hwange National Park, said: "I fitted it last October. It was monitored almost daily and we were aware that Xanda and his pride was spending a lot of time out of the park in the last six months, but there is not much we can do about that.