It always makes me laugh when humans beat themselves up over "wildlife management" and "pest control".
IMO those that seek to preserve a species for it's own sake are utterly naive. The entire history of life on earth is a history of extinction, and this started long before we arrived. We are not the only species who manage our patch - a lion will kill, on sight, any cheetah it finds (including the cute furry "bay-bees") because it instinctively regards the cheetah as a weaker competition for resources - i.e. a pest.
I've always regarded hunters as the most active conservationists because they have an interest in preserving their sport. The fox, deer, pheasant, grouse, quail, trout, salmon et al - like anything else in life - have to pay their way. An example:
Here in France the sanglier (wild boar) thrives in most of the large forests - despite it being a serious pest to farmers. Why? because significant numbers of frenchmen and women like nothing better than to spend the season shooting them for the pot! (the dried saussicon are particularly delicious). The result is that the chasse de sanglier is a large part of french culture and a powerful lobby preserves forest habitat against developers, industrial farmers and the like.
Another example is Africa where it's populations of large animals, in the face of a rapidly growing human population, only survive due to tourism and (very expensive) managed big game hunting. If those industries were to fail...well I'm sorry cute leopard cub, but we humans have got mouths to feed!