Texas hunters to sell permit to kill rare black rhino

WASHINGTON,

A Texas hunting club wants to auction off a permit to kill an endangered black rhinoceros in Namibia in order to help save the species, US officials told AFP Friday.

"The Dallas Safari Club is getting a permit from the Namibian government and auctioning that hunting permit for a black rhino," Tim Van Norman, chief of the branch of permits at the US Fish and Wildlife Service told AFP.

The Texas club was quoted by the Dallas Observer as saying the hunting permit could fetch up to $750,000 at auction later this year, with the funds going to the Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia's Black Rhino.

Black rhinos are internationally considered an endangered species and the World Wildlife Fund says about 4,800 are alive in the African wild.

Namibia has an annual quota to take up to five black rhinos out of their population of some 1,800 animals.

A single permit issued to a US hunter in 2009 to kill a black rhino fetched $175,000 for the Namibian Game Products Trust Fund which pays for conservation efforts, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

BEST TARGETS

Van Norman said the US government has not issued any permits to the Dallas Safari Club and would not do so until an individual hunter is identified as the winner of the auction.

The person would have to pass certain background checks and the animal chosen for the hunt would have to be approved as being beneficial to the conservation of the species for the US government to allow the trophy to come back inside US borders.

Van Norman said Namibia has found that older black rhino males that have already produced offspring and are in reproductive decline are the best targets for hunting.

"The Namibian government through their management program identifies specific animals that they feel need to be removed from the population to increase the overall population numbers," he told AFP.

"Black rhinos are very territorial so you will have an older male that is keeping younger males from reproducing," he explained.

"By removing these older males from the population you get an increase in the production of calves. Younger males are able to impregnate the females that are in that area so you get more offspring than from some of these older males."

DISTURBING NEWS

The Humane Society International said the news is "disturbing."

"We're in the midst of a global poaching crisis, and the black rhino is being pushed to the brink of extinction," the US-based group said in a statement.

"We oppose and will campaign against the Safari Club attempt to have a permit granted."

Dallas Safari Club chief executive Ben Carter declined an AFP request for comment, responding in an email: "We are reconsidering any interviews for the time being. Thank you!"

He was quoted by the Dallas Observer earlier this week as saying: "Generally speaking, out of a population of 2,000, harvesting three rhinos over a couple or three years has no impact on the health of the rhino herd at all."