There is an argument that the hunting of elephants and other endangered animals can have a good effect if it's controlled carefully. The argument is basically this:

Foreign visitors who want to shoot African elephants pay a lot of money to do so. If the number they kill is kept below a certain point, the money generated by the hunting is enough to pay for the protection and well being of more elephants and other animals - more than are actually killed.

It's possible to see how this may be true, though there must be a lot of ifs and buts here - for example, who will regulate the numbers killled, and how do you ensure that the profits generated go back into the conservation of wildlife?

You're still left with the question of what kind of person would go all that way just to shoot an elephant - that's the one that really puzzles me.