Addax antelope for $8,000, scimitar-horned oryx for $7,500—both endangered species advertised as available to hunt at a private game reserve in Texas as of April 2024. The scimitar-horned oryx, a species declared “Extinct in the Wild” 24 years ago, was reintroduced into Chad’s Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve in February 2023 thanks to conservation breeding programs but is still listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Another species currently listed as “Extinct in the Wild” (the Pére David’s deer, originally native to China) is also available to hunt, according to information posted online by Greystone Castle Sporting Club in Mingus.
Greystone Castle, an hour and a half drive west of Dallas, describes their resort online as the “premier luxury hunting lodge in Texas.” In April 2024, its website offered fully guided tour packages, premier accommodations, and “exotic hunts”; however, its descriptions of 30 available species did not disclose that several are facing declining populations and extinction threats in the wild. At least two—the Addax antelope and the scimitar-horned oryx—remain on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. A spokesman for the ranch did not respond to a phone call and subsequent email requests for comment for this article.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires protection of endangered and threatened species regardless of the species’ country of origin, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Federal law prohibits actions that may further the decline of IUCN-listed species.
