Corey Knowlton Pays $350,000 To Hunt And Kill Rare Black Rhino

Corey Knowlton is a Texan hunter who on Saturday won an auction in Dallas for the right to hunt and kill one of the 5,000 black rhinos remaining on planet Earth. Now, Knowlton has responded to the outcry on his Facebook page.

According to The Los Angeles Times, the auction took place at the Dallas Convention Center and was run by the Dallas Safari Club, which had earlier announced its intention to auction off the permit granted by the government of Namibia, a country of about 2 million in southwest Africa.

The Namibian government has auctioned off permits to kill a single black rhino on six previous occasions, but Saturday’s auction was the first held outside of Africa. The previous high bidder paid $223,000 for the privilege of killing one of the rare rhinos, but the Namibians had hoped that holding the auction in America would push the bidding up to $1 million.

That did not happen, but the Namibian government says that Corey Knowlton’s $350,000 will go into the Conservation Trust Fund For The Namibian Black Rhino.

Yes, you read that correctly. They’re selling permits to kill endangered black rhinos — in order to save them.

The worldwide count of black rhinos is now at 5,055, of which about 1,800 are in Namibia, according to National Geographic.

Though Corey Knowlton now says that he is interested in conservation efforts for the black rhino, the “conservation” logic has not impressed protesters who demonstrated outside the Dallas Convention Center Saturday. The Safari Club beefed up security around the auction, saying it had received threats serious enough to call in the FBI.

One such e-mailed threat read, “For every rhino you kill, we will kill a member of the club,” according to National Geographic.

The online activist group Anonymous has said that it has already targeted web sites run by the Namibian government, the Dallas Convention Center and a Dallas auction company with disruptive cyber attacks.

As for Corey Knowlton, the web site for a company called The Hunting Consortium Ltd. lists him as an “associate hunting consultant” who is a “highly experienced international hunter who has worked in the hunting tourism industry for more than a decade and is considered one of this industry’s rising stars.”

Knowlton, says the bio, “has hunted widely on 6 continents taking more than 120 species, including a Super Slam of wild sheep and the big five in Africa.”

The Corey Knowlton Facebook page shows him with a variety of exotic animals that he has presumably killed.

On Monday he posted a message on his page, responding to the outcry.

“Thank you all for your comments about conservation and the current situation regarding the Black Rhino,” Knowlton wrote. “I am considering all sides and concerns involved in this unique situation. Please don’t rush to judgment with emotionally driven criticism towards individuals on either sides of this issue.”

Knowlton went on to say, “I deeply care about all of the inhabitants of this planet.”