That's utterly irrelevant. I find elephants in the wild beautiful, worthy of protection, and not as far from endangered as you think. It's my personal opinion to find elephant hunters equivalent to scumsucking reprobates, and to direct my dollars away from their businesses.
By your logic, we should all universally also have no issue with hunting dogs or cats or really any goddamn animal not on the brink of extinction.
It was a culling. Too many elephants, not enough resources. That elephant wasn't hunted so much as scheduled for termination. And we do do the same thing with surplus dogs and cats here in the US at least.
Still, paying to do the shooting is even creepier than hunting an elephant. Forget the tracking, stalking, and pay to just enjoy the killing? Eww. Imagine the Humane Society auctioning off a day operating the kitty gas chamber.
I'm not familiar with the elephant hunts with regard to godaddy @ all, does anyone have a link? But I've heard that a lot of the wild game hunt trips in Africa actually cause animals to be raised, so the net result is an actual increase in the animals - not sure if it is relevant in this case or to you in general.
By your logic, we should all universally also have no issue with hunting dogs or cats or really any goddamn animal not on the brink of extinction.