In order to save the critically endangered black rhino a conservationist club is offering up the chance to hunt and kill one for up to a million dollars.
The World Wildlife Fund believes there are only 4,800 black rhinos left in Africa. The rhinos have been hunted to the brink of extinction, mainly for their horns which some believe possess magical or healing powers, Al Jazeera reported.
The Dallas Safari Club aims to raise money to put towards saving the animals by auctioning off the chance to kill one of them.
"First and foremost, this is about saving the black rhino," Ben Carter, executive director of the Dallas Safari Club, told Agence France Presse, Al Jazeera reported. All of the proceeds will go to The Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia's Black Rhino.
In 2009 a similar conservation effort raised $175,000 for the Namibian Game Products Trust Fund.
It has been estimated that about one black rhino is killed by poachers every day.
"Poachers come by helicopter and dart a rhino from the air with a powerful tranquilizer, a drug three thousand times more powerful than morphine," Jonah Hull, an Al Jazeera reporter wrote
"As (a rhino) succumbs to deep sedation, they take a chainsaw to her face. The machine's sharp teeth tear into her skull, removing her nasal cavities, exposing parts of her brain," he said. "(The horn) will be sold to a middle man for a small fortune," he reported.
The idea of killing one rhino to save the rest is controversial, but Carter believes it does more good than harm.
"Black rhinos tend to have a fairly high mortality rate," Carter told the Dallas Observer. "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."
"People are talking about 'Why don't you do a photo safari?' or whatever," Carter said. "Well, that's great, but people don't pay for that."
