HARARE, Zimbabwe (Xinhua) — In Zimbabwe, it is not only a famous lion being gunned down this year. A rarely huge elephant bull, dubbed ‘King of Elephants’, with a pair impressive tusks became the latest victim of trophy hunting and stirred worldwide condemnation.

The elephant in its 50s is believed to have been one of the largest of its kind ever seen in Zimbabwe in years. It was shot dead in Malipati Safari Area on October 8 in southeast Zimbabwe by a foreign national on a legal hunting trip, a local hunters’ association confirmed.

The alleged German hunter paid US$60,000 for a 21-day game hunt in the area and was given permission to take off the African Big Five: elephants, leopards, lions, buffalo and rhinoceros.

Social media was filled with condemnation of the killing of the elephant with one Stephen Bredenkamp posting on Facebook: “the carnage continues. Despite an ‘Authorised Kill’ where is the line drawn?”

“The elephant turned out to be a tremendously large elephant with very big tusks possibly never seen in Zimbabwe in at least 30 years or more,” the chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association Louis Muller told Xinhua.

He said that the existence of the elephant bull was largely unknown to the conservation industry in Zimbabwe, indicating that it could have been roaming around Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park and neighbouring Kruger National Park of South Africa.

Together with Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park, Gonarezhou and Kruger national parks form the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park that straddles the borders of Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe to create one of the largest wildlife reserves in the world covering 37,572 square kilometres, which is similar to the size of The Netherlands.

Muller said though the hunt appeared legal, the outrage on social media might help elevate the status of giant elephants to “a national treasure”, thus effectively guarding them against hunting.

“As an industry and a country, there is need to identify these big bulls, not all of them, but at least identify a few of them in game parks, name them and protect them as assets for the benefit of the nation,” he said.

The killing of the elephant comes barely three months after the off-take of Cecil the lion in Hwange National Park by American dentist Walter Palmer. The 13-year-old black manned lion was collared for a study conducted by a team of Oxford University researchers and local partners.

The death of Cecil triggered waves of outcry on the Internet, and protesters shut down Palmer’s dentistry in Minnesota.

Zimbabwe has since dropped plans to have Palmer extradited to Zimbabwe to face justice after it was proved that he had the papers to conduct the hunt.

Zimbabwe is famed for its abundant wildlife resources and conservation is assisted by the average US$40 million a year income from the trophy hunting industry.

The Government seems reluctant to go too far to appease online outrage by hurting the trophy industry, which officials and the industry’s supporters say contribute significantly to the conservation efforts in least developed countries like Zimbabwe.