The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is weighing whether to grant a Texas-based hunter a permit to import as a trophy the carcass of an endangered black rhinoceros that he plans to shoot in Namibia,
CBS News reported.
Corey Knowlton won a $350,000 bid auctioned by the Dallas Safari Club in cooperation with Namibian wildlife authorities to shoot the rhino, and applied in the spring for permission to return with the animal's body, CBS reported.
The money would go toward conservation activities including protecting that country's remaining 1,800 rhinos.
"The aim is to reinvest these financial resources back to conservation, protected area management, and rural community development," said Kenneth Uiseb, a Namibian wildlife official, CBS reported.
Five animals— older males that can no longer reproduce— are to be hunted by paying customers.
The club would reimburse Knowlton's bid if the permit is not forthcoming. He leads hunting trips for
The Hunting Consortium, and he has killed over 120 species including an African lion, leopard, elephant, Cape buffalo and rhinoceros, the company's website said, according to CBS.
He has been quoted as telling WFAA Television, "I'm a hunter. I want to experience a black rhino. I want to be intimately involved with a black rhino," according to CBS.
All told, there are 4,880 black rhinos still alive. Poachers who kill them for their horns are posing an increasing threat to the animals.
"Kill it to save it is not only cruel, it's not conservation," said Jeff Flocken of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "If black rhinos and other dwindling species are to have a future, people must be encouraged to value animals for their inherent worth alive, not their price tag when they are dead," CBS reported.
Namibia also sold a hunting permit worth $200,000 to Las Vegas investment manager Michael Luzich. He has also applied for a permit to bring the carcass as a trophy into the country.