A hunter who paid $350,000 last year at a Dallas auction for a license to hunt an endangered black rhino in Namibia will be able to bring home a trophy despite protests from animal rights groups that said the sale was immoral.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on Thursday it had found that $550,000 in proceeds generated from two planned hunts in the southern African country will go to conservation and granted permits for them, including the one sold at the Texas auction.
Animal protection groups said the decision sends the wrong message.
“When the global community is working so hard to stop people from killing rhinos for their horns, we are giving a stamp of approval to a special class of privileged elite to kill these majestic animals as a head-hunting exercise,” the Humane Society of the United States said in a statement on Thursday.
But rhinos have come under a much greater threat than that of high-priced hunts.
Poachers, many from impoverished Mozambique, in 2014 killed more than 1,200 rhinos in South Africa, home to almost all of the animals in Africa, for their horns. International criminal syndicates import the horn to Asia, where it is used in traditional medicine, South African officials said.
There are about 25,000 rhinos in Africa—20,000 white rhinos and 5,000 black rhinos—with the majority in South Africa. Namibia is one of the other leading habitats.
Both countries allow for a handful of regulated and monitored rhino hunts each year with proceeds going to fund conservation.
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