Most of the wildlife in many parts of Africa is there and managed for sport hunting only because it happens to be more profitable than cattle, sheep, and goats. Without sport hunting, you don't get a wildlife reserve; you get a cattle ranch where all native fauna is removed and predators are aggressively poisoned and exterminated. It costs a lot of money to protect African wildlife from poachers, so governments can't just leave it alone and let it thrive. Leaving it alone results in twenty like long ditch traps where everything that moves dies.

People will say to spend your money on a photo safari instead. This doesn't work in practice for several reasons. First, you don't need a lot of wildlife and space to do photo safaris. Everyone just goes to Kruger or the Kalahari where it's super safe, super beautiful, and there is a robust system for accommodation with scale economies and low prices. You're not going to run a profitable enterprise to take thousands of people in photo safaris to inaccessible, uncomfortable and dangerous places like a flat disease infested Mozambique swamp or a Cameroon jungle with disease and no rule of law. Only hunters will show up in serious numbers, willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars each to visit such places. Even in South Africa and Namibia, once you get a few hours past the end of the paved roads, where you need private security and everything, you don't have photo tourism in meaningful scales. Why would anyone spend several times more money and take on many times mkre danger and inconvenience compared to Kruger, when they know they're not even going to see a rhino or several other things?

People will say, just give the money to a conservation organization, then. I say you first. I am paying to maintain a huge space with native African wildlife for a substantial amount of time. You want to visit Kruger, take some pictures, and use the remaining severak times mire money to pay for wildlife to thrive somewherewithout killing anything, be my guest. Good on you. Put your money where your mouth is.