This is the policy by which Feld Entertainment is seeking to send Ringling’s eight endangered tigers to Germany’s Circus Krone. The company’s nearly 700-page application points to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to conservation organizations over the years. Some donations have nothing to do with tigers or lions; Feld cites more than $500,000 given to the International Elephant Foundation since 1999. But Feld also notes $235,000 given to tiger conservation efforts, including the Tigris Foundation, a small NGO that protects Siberian leopards and tigers in the wild. Tigris founder Michiel Hötte confirmed $100,000 in donations from Feld since 2012, calling the company “an extremely loyal and generous supporter.”

Tom Albert, Feld’s vice president of government relations, argues that “pay-to-play” is a “gross oversimplification” of the FWS policy. The agency’s regulators, he says, consider much more than payments when deciding to grant export and import applications—they would never grant an application that did not have benefits for conservation. “It’s not like people just say, I wrote a check, now I get a permit,” Albert says. “That’s not how it works.”

To wit, Feld’s application doesn’t just rely on donations to sway the agency. It also argues that the export of the tigers would be, as required, “for the purpose of enhancement of the survival of the species,” because the cats’ circus performances have inherent conservation value. “The presentation of an endangered species before a live audience, in conjunction with conservation education messaging, provides an unparalleled educational value, creating awareness in the viewer … of the importance of preserving the species,” the application states.

“Importing and exporting these captive-bred tigers from circuses has no relevance to conservation.”

Whether circuses help preserve endangered species is hotly debated in the scientific and conservation communities. A 2015 paper published in the journal Animals and Society concluded that circuses promote the notion that animals exist for entertainment, belong in captivity, and aren’t in danger of extinction. Circus tigers are also highly inbred, meaning they are not genetically similar to tigers in the wild. Conservationists widely agree that, because the animals can’t be bred to increase the population of tigers in the wild, they have little conservation value. “Importing and exporting these captive-bred tigers from circuses has no relevance to conservation,” Hötte said, noting he supports the Dutch law banning wild animals in circuses.

Hötte does agree that Feld’s donations to conservation organizations like his are helpful to promoting overall preservation of endangered tigers—that’s why he supports the FWS policy allowing owners of endangered species to donate money in exchange for selling the animals. But some conservationists and most animal rights advocates see a slippery slope instead, arguing that the pay-to-play” policy sets a dangerous precedent that could lead to endangered species being sold for all sorts of nefarious purposes. “If we let the circus pay for these animals, then what’s stopping the restaurants? What’s stopping traditional Asian medicine makers?” said Tanya Sanerib, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If you open up this concept, there’s no end to the floodgates.”

The floodgates may already have opened, and we just don’t know it yet. Brendan Boyle, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, investigated the FWS permitting loophole last year and found that “virtually every one of the more than 1,300 ESA permits given out in the last five years involves this pay-to-play scheme.” Furthermore, Boyle said, “FWS admits it does not check the legitimacy of the organizations, which are often foreign, to which applicants purport to send money, nor does it confirm whether any money is actually spent on the conservation activities outlined in the ESA application.”

Boyle asserted that this “scheme has been developed and implemented by FWS staff without any oversight or authorization by Congress, and contrary to the conservation principles of the ESA.” But FWS, which did not return a request for comment, has maintained that it is legally allowed to grant permits in exchange for donations. In a statement to Undark.org, the agency said the ESA “explicitly provides” that companies can conduct “otherwise prohibited activities” with endangered species if they contribute to the “enhancement” of the species. “In the case of the import or export of live captive-bred animals,” the FWS said, “enhancement is usually provided through the generation of revenue in support of established conservation programs that contribute to in improving the status of the species in the wild.”

Albert, of Feld Entertainment, noted that animal welfare groups have sued to stop the policy and failed. While true, he failed to mention that in the most high-profile lawsuit, U.S. District Court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson simply ruled that the groups lacked standing to sue over the export of seven chimpanzees for scientific research. And, in fact, Jackson railed against the FWS policy in her opinion dismissing the lawsuit last year. “FWS’s broad interpretation appears to thwart the dynamic of environmental protection that Congress plainly intended when it mandated that no export of endangered species be allowed unless the agency permits such export pursuant to certain specified circumstances,” she wrote. She said it was “doubtful” that Congress “intended to authorize the agency to ‘sell’ its permits in this fashion” when it created the Endangered Species Act.

This is precisely the argument conservationists make when speaking out against the FWS’ permitting practice. “If one of the goals of the ESA is to de-commodify wildlife when they’re imperiled, this concept of pay-to-play is really troubling,” Sanerib said. “Because it means that you are, through this complicated, multi-step process, allowing companies to engage in commercial activity with endangered species.”

Stopping the practice, however, would require one of two things. Congress could amend the Endangered Species Act—which has been done before, but seems unlikely given Republicans’ unified control of government. Or the FWS could issue guidance itself, but that also seems unlikely, given the agency’s defense of its policy. In 2003, under President George W. Bush, FWS attempted to make the pay-to-play policy explicitly legal, but backed down after intense backlash from conservationists and scientists. Since then, aside from Boyle’s investigation, there’s been no apparent effort on Capitol Hill to change the policy.

In the meantime, both the Animal Legal Defense Fund and PETA are preparing detailed comments on Feld Entertainment’s application to export Lacey’s tigers to the German Circus. The comment period closes on July 20, after which FWS will take as long as it needs to make a decision. While the fate of the Ringling cats is up in the air, the fate of the pay-to-play permitting scheme seems clearer: It will remain the unofficial policy of the U.S. government for the foreseeable future.