WASHINGTON— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notified the public Tuesday of two applications from U.S. hunters in Texas and Florida seeking to import black rhinoceros hunting trophies. The rhinos — named Lippie and Willem, aged 28 and 31 — were killed in Namibia.

Black rhinos are critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only an estimated 6,400 individuals remaining in all of Africa. While the population is growing, black rhinos are still highly imperiled because of poaching for horns, habitat loss and hunting, including “pseudo-hunting” to obtain and trade in otherwise illicit horns.

“It’s tragic that trophy hunters pay vast sums for the luxury of killing such highly imperiled animals when the focus should be on recovering the species,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This pay-to-play system perpetuates rarity, which suits wealthy hunters out to bag exotic kills, but doesn’t help critically endangered animals like Lippie and Willem.”

Both rhinos were killed in 2022 — one on a private game reserve, Erindi, and the other in Mangetti National Park. According to application materials, the hunters paid around a quarter of a million U.S. dollars each in hunting fees.

The U.S. permit applications and supporting materials were disclosed Sept. 24. This is in accordance with an Endangered Species Act provision that requires the public to receive notice of and an opportunity to comment on import applications for endangered species such as black rhinos.

Black rhinos were listed as endangered under the Act in 1980 and are subject to a commercial trade ban imposed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. To import a black rhino trophy, permits under both the Act and the CITES treaty are required.

To issue the permits, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has to not only find that trophy hunting is not detrimental to the species’ survival, but that it “enhances” or benefits its survival as well. The public has 30 days to submit evidence that such findings should not be made. The last black rhino hunting trophy import permit was issued in 2019.

The United States is a major importer of hunting trophies globally, along with the European Union.

“With the biodiversity crisis unraveling life as we know it, it’s mind-boggling that agencies still spend their limited resources permitting killing rather than on conservation,” said Sanerib. “I wish these applications were for creative ways to counter rhino poaching and other threats, not about whether to allow trade in highly imperiled animal parts taken for thrills.”