Corey Knowlton told Dallas television stations WFAA and KTVT that he won last week's Dallas Safari Club auction to hunt a black rhino in the southern African nation of Namibia.

The club says the permit was auctioned to raise money for efforts to protect and conserve the species.

An estimated 4000 black rhinos remain in the wild, and the auction drew critics who said all members of an endangered species deserve protection.

"I'm a hunter," Knowlton told WFAA.

"I want to experience a black rhino. I want to be intimately involved with a black rhino. If I go over there and shoot it or not shoot it, it's beyond the point."

Knowlton lives in Royse City, about 48 kilometres outside Dallas, and leads international hunting trips for a Virginia-based company, The Hunting Consortium.

He told KTVT that threats made to organisers before the auction led the Safari Club to contact him and see if he would bid.

Knowlton and a silent partner raised the money to make the bid, he said.

His name was posted on Facebook and then picked up by websites that publicised his involvement in the auction.

He told KTVT that, since then, he has feared for his family's safety.

"They're wanting to kill me," he said. "They're wanting to kill my children. They're wanting to skin us alive."

The club says the Namibian rhino in question is older, male and non-breeding - and that the animal was likely to be targeted for removal anyway because it was becoming aggressive.

Knowlton said he believed the hunt would be managed well and that the money would go to save rhinos in the end.

Of critics who had written thousands of comments on his Facebook page and online, Knowlton said: "They don't know who I am. They don't know what I'm about. They don't even understand the process."

Knowlton did not return phone and email messages from The Associated Press.

AP