I could say the same thing about the ivory trade: it provides wealth, it is a renewable resource, it brings desperately needed capital into Kenya ...
If other uses could be found for elephants — meat, hides, bone meal — then I would advocate a managed cull or production husbandry.
They are animals, nothing more. It’s time we stop crippling ourselves with childish anthropomorphizations.
Unfortunately, your analogy does not hold. The poacher in the field earns very little - a pittance compared to the living elephant’s value in tourist dollars.
It is true they are animals - but, unlike domestic livestock, animals whose economic value is vastly greater if they are alive, then when they are dead.
But the point is probably moot - at the current rate of slaughter, they will all be gone in short order. And in today’s political and economic climate, there will be no highly-publicized rallying cry to “Do Something!”
There will simply be a collective shrugging of shoulders.
I don’t know why you directed your “childish anthropomorphizations” comment to me; nothing in my posts suggested that I was attributing human characteristics to elephants, rhinos, or any other animal.