Texas Group to Auction Hunt of Endangered Black Rhino to the Highest Bidder

The Dallas Safari Club, a Texas-based hunting group that promotes "conservation, education and ethical hunting worldwide," is moving forward with a controversial proposal to save endangered black rhinoceroses in Namibia by auctioning off a permit allowing the highest bidder to travel to the southern African nation and kill one of its 1,795 black rhinos.

Critics of the plan have decried it as counterintuitive to conservation efforts, contending that more can be done to protect the black rhino than auctioning off the rights to kill one.

However, the Dallas Safari Club (DSC) said that 100 percent of the revenue generated from the single permit, which is expected to fetch between $250,000 and $1 million when it is auctioned in January at the DSC's annual convention, will reportedly go to The Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia's Black Rhino.

"First and foremost, this is about saving the black rhino," Ben Carter, DSC executive director, said in a statement. "There is a biological reason for this hunt, and it's based on a fundamental premise of modern wildlife management: populations matter; individuals don't. By removing counterproductive individuals from a herd, rhino populations can actually grow."

Fewer than 5,000 black rhinos remain in all of Africa with a majority located in South Africa and neighboring Namibia. Their numbers are steadily in decline thanks to an increase in poaching rhino for their horns. By-the-gram, rhino horn is more valuable than gold or cocaine, driven by its use in traditional Chinese medicine and as a status symbol in places like Vietnam.

Last year the number of rhinos poached in South Africa shattered all previous records with at least 688 documented instances of rhino poaching -- nearly two per day. Last month South Africa's 2012 total was eclipsed, and with more than two months left in the year 2013 is certainly to be more deadly for rhinos than last year.

The DSC said it secured the hunting permit directly through the government of the Republic of Namibia, reportedly the first time the nation has sold a black rhino-hunting permit outside of its boarders.

Namibia allows an annual export quota of up to five hunter-taken black rhinos each year, the DSC said, adding that typically the government sells the permits to contractors within Namibia, who then sell them to individual hunters from around the world.

American hunters typically are not interested in buying one of the permits because it is against US law to import a trophy rhino carcass into the country.

It is still unclear whether the DSC auction winner will be allowed to import a trophy black rhino into the US.

Tim Van Norman, chief of the branch of permits at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), told Al Jazeera that at this time the government has not issued a permit to the DSC to import a rhino carcass, and if it were to issue a permit, it would be subject to a number of conditions. When the DSC first announced the rhino hunting auction on Oct. 11, it said the FWS would fully cooperate. 

"The animal chosen for the hunt would also have to be approved as beneficial to the species' conservation for the government to allow the trophy inside US borders," Al Jazeera reported, adding that the winning hunter would need to undergo a background check, hire a guide to lead the hunt and be accompanied by Namibian wildlife officials.

The conditions have been met before, however, as recently as April of this year when the FWS issued its first permit for a hunter-taken black rhino to be imported to the US.

"The permit was for an old, aggressive, non-breeding bull taken in Waterberg Plateau National Park in Namibia in 2009. This hunt removed an animal that was counterproductive to herd growth and generated $175,000 for rhino conservation efforts," the DSC said.

Older, black rhino males are likely to be approved as targets for the hunt because they can be territorial and prevent younger, more reproductively able males from mating.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said that news of the rhino hunting auction was "disturbing," according to Al Jazeera.

"The world is seeing a concerted effort to preserve the very few black rhinos and other rhinos who are dodging poachers' bullets and habitat destruction," he said.

"The last thing they need are wealthy elites from foreign lands coming in to kill them for their heads."

Pacelle also questioned the ethics of a hunter willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill one rhino in Namibia.

"Shooting a black rhino in the wild is about as difficult as shooting a parked car," he said. "If these are multimillionaires and they want to help rhinos, they can give their money to help rhinos. They don't need to accompany their cash transfer with a high caliber bullet," he said.

Since this story has been picked up by various global media, Namibia's Save the Rhino Trust has been erroneously linked to the hunting permit auction. The DSC names The Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia's Black Rhino at its benefactor.

Save the Rhino Trust has made a statement against their defamation. Little to no information is available regarding The Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia's Black Rhino; the group does not appear to have a website or operate any social media accounts.