It's too bad if elephants see crops as a salad bar. Perhaps some africans should simply stop producing millions of children that they cannot feed. Hunting safaris are NOT the only way money is made from the wildlife by the way, people will pay big bucks just to stay at a swanky camp and go into the bush and simply see the wild animals in their natural surrounding (such as there is left). Yes Enthetan, I do realise there aren't thirty feet high walls separating the humans from the animals, I lived in South Africa for several years and came into contact with plenty of wildlife I can assure you.
All this ties in with what fucking humans have done to this planet generally. It just depresses me.
I don't feel we really have the right to dictate to another country (especially a third world one) how they run their survival. The black Africans usually have large families so some of the kids will become adults. Child mortality is still huge over there and AIDS has really added to that problem as well.
Their situation is completely different to ours. Being third world, much of the population is uneducated and things operate on a subsistence level.
If elephants take their grain and lions take their stock, their whole survival is threatened. They have a right to feed and protect their families too. If a hunter gives their community money to help them out, it's money they never had and maybe never would have. It can buy medicine and stuff they can't grow or hunt for. Hunting and basic agriculture is first nature to them, so our sense of morality about animal welfare would seem as alien as scientology or that "Real Housewives" show would be to them.
There are people from our parts of the world that are over there educating them in ways to co-exist with the wildlife without having to harm them. It will take some time to gain effective ground, early results are already proving encouraging.
It is also a little different in first world countries where we have already wiped out most of the indigenous wildlife and then point fingers at the others. We can sit back smugly and tell them to starve whilst we feast on what we bought down at the shops. We've move on from being a bunch of little tribes. More luck to us.
Things are slowly changing in Africa, still a very long way to go. If they don't find ways to ensure political stability, not much can change. Meantime they just do what they can.