A lot of African Safaris are just your basic cull hunting to manage the number of animals. The best explanation I have seen and specific for elephants was by a Facebook friend and I had to share.

Remember, without regulated legal hunting, an elephant is just a 6 tonne rat that destroys their crops to the locals, and they *will* cooperate with poachers to exterminate as many of them as possible.

Where regulated hunting is legal, the locals protect the herd from poachers, up to and including “shoot, shovel, and shut up” on the poachers (where the government doesn’t also put a bounty on dead poachers, anyway…)

Cull hunts are widely misunderstood, but there are usually very good conservation reasons to have them with large mammals.

As for big predators, substitute crops for cattle, goats and humans and you the idea.