And guess where the former Spanish King Juan Carlos went hunting? In Africa and he is still member of WWF. Our king at least hunts boar and other game (which are tame and fed by humans) but Juan Carlos did not mind shooting Elephants.
In some of the African nations, the elephant population has gone out of control. This is damaging the vegetation, thereby making things difficult for a number of the endangered species. Countries such as South Africa are planning to cull a part of the wild elephant population. So there is nothing wrong in hunting one or two elephants.
Though it's hard to decide if you really shoot the elephants since, at least in india, the humans are guilty for a big part. They take away land from the elephants constantly so that they have less and less space. It leads to elephants going wild and there was even a case described where an elephant started to eat humans.
I think they are somewhat alike to humans emotionally. And humans start to get crazy too sometimes.
I'm not sure if the population was growing so much too or if it only was the take-away of elephant land.