In 1985 I was in Zimbabwe. The situation there has changed now, but I'm told similar arrangements to the one I'm about to describe exist in other southern African nations.
In Zimbabwe in the 1980's some of the national parks (like Hwange) were huge. They were surrounded by Hunting Reserves, where hunting was permitted under the guidance of the National Parks authority.
The idea is, the National Park is the centre of all the wildlife. As species breed up in numbers and density increases, individuals overflow out into the hunting areas where they can be legally hunted. No hunting takes place in the National Park, so the core of the population is protected.
The benefits of this to the community are enormous. At the time (1985) if a white hunter from USA or Germany wants to hunt an elephant, he pays the authority something like $15,000 US dollars, of which half goes directly to the local community to help build roads, schools, hospitals etc.
To go on a hunt you need porters, trackers, gun bearers, cooks etc and these all come from the local community - and get paid for the service.
So the hunter finally finds his elephant in the overflow population and shoots it. He has his photo taken standing beside it with his foot on it's head (or whatever it is they do in photos), and that is all. The locals, however, get the elephant. They cut up the meat to take back for their families, they get the hide, tail, feet, eyelashes and other bits to turn into curios and souvenirs which they can then sell to non-hunting tourists (and the hunter, if he wants a souvenir of the hunt other than a photo).
On the way back to camp the hunter may see a kudu or zebra or buffalo, and want to shoot that too. The Parks officer will pull out his notebook and advise how much it will cost the hunter, and the whole process starts again.
The benefit to the wildlife is that now the local people don't go out and indiscriminately hunt wildlife for food in the National Park - they have a vested interest in protecting the wildlife because they not only get finances in the community coffers, but they also get employment and food.
To illustrate how effective this program worked, during the 1980's ad early 1990's, when elephant populations were declining throughout Africa because of poaching, the countries that had this system of regulated hunting - Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa - were the only countries which had elephant populations increasing. In fact, the moratorium was released at one point for these countries to legally sell off their stockpiled ivory on the international market, with the profits destined to go to further conservation work in their countries.
God only knows what has happened to the wildlife in Zimbabwe in recent years. Now that tourism is effectively zero, I imagine the local people would have gone back to indiscriminant hunting of bushmeat to survive.
Hix
