Really quite a contentious issue. Nobody seems to be ethically or morally bothered by murder, instead it looks like a purely pragmatic approach. Oh, what folly, millions of years of evolution bring majesty into our surroundings, and we as humans feel that we have the final say in who stays and who gets eaten. I pray our human family grows more compassionate and kind toward fellow humans and toward all life on the planet. We should be conserving the majesty, and we should not be funding it via means that undermine that basic tenet. Perhaps I speak nothing new, but it is important for people to know that if we truly looked at the situation, killing is unnecessary. If you really want to go big game hunting, why not use a tranquilizer gun? To say you are helping conserve nature while actively destroying it is nothing short of hypocrisy and deceptive wording. To me it's not really a gray area. It's the difference between evolving nobly and devolving.
After watching enough shows about lions on Netflix, I can't see how anyone wants to preserve these creatures in the wild. They are mind glowingly brutal animals, whose very existence is predicated in mauling other animals. If you care about animal suffering, don't let lions out to terrorize livestock.