The fact is that the reason most of these animals are endangered is due to illegal poaching. Not the handful of legal kills that people pay high amounts for. I don't think that analogy you put out there is accurate at all. I don't like the idea of trophy hunting, but the fact remains that if local people feel the need to protect the animals for these high priced hunts, they are less likely to become poachers or support poachers.
From my understanding, some of these villages, which do not have a tourism economy, rely on these hunts and are very motivated to keep these animals safe and grow the population. By placing a value on these animals it increases their importance to the people who live there. People just donating money to foundations does not create that. I would be interested in hearing any ideas that could accomplish decreasing poaching, increasing animal population and give locals incentives of protecting the animals.
Like I have said previously, this trophy kill thing disgusted me, until I read about what happened with the white rhino, and had sort of a paradigm shift in the fact that while it's easy for us to sit comfortable in our homes and condemn this, the full story behind this is much more complicated.