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Dallas Safari Club auctioning chance to shoot endangered rhino

A 27-year-old black rhino and her 8 year-old black rhino calf at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Fewer than 5,100 of the species exist in the wild. (Lincoln Park Zoo)
A 27-year-old black rhino and her 8 year-old black rhino calf at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Fewer than 5,100 of the species exist in the wild. (Lincoln Park Zoo)

DALLAS, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- The Dallas Safari Club is auctioning a permit to shoot an endangered black rhinoceros to raise money for conservation of the animal, club officials said.

The permit would allow a hunter to travel to the Republic of Namibia to shoot and kill one of approximately 5,055 of the animals left in the world, ABC News reported Monday.

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Ben Carter, the executive director of the Dallas Safari Club, said 100 percent of the auction proceeds would go toward the Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia's Black Rhino.

"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," he said.

Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States said that logic is flawed.

"I think if they were multimillionaires and they were serious about helping rhinos, they could give money to help rhinos and not shoot one along the way," he said. "The first rule of protecting a rare species is to limit the human [related] killing."

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The Humane Society is petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to prohibit the auction winner from bringing the black rhino carcass back to the United States after the kill, ABC News reported.

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