Look at this way. When I read your comment I thought, "what a monster. How is it possible that such a monster exists in this world." That's why I went to look him up. But when I read two or three other facts about the story, that feeling went away and was replaced by the feeling that I had been tricked. Had you mentioned that this happened over 50 years ago, your comment wouldn't have had that effect, because today's knowledge and moral consciousness, both of which you're relying on, didn't exist back then. But instead you wrote in the present tense, obfuscating that. You also used the word "proficient", implying that killing elephants was his main goal. And you put his stated goal in scare quotes. That just seems like a lot of misleading for a short comment.
Instead of testing the elephant culling hypothesis, the man ran wholesale with an idea that appealed to his senses.
He was later involved in politics and essentially called himself a terrorist, if he were black. Which pretty much got him the boot.
He’s now advocating for grazing patterns and movements to “mimic” natural patterns, even though the evidence for his theories are thin.
The man has a habit of hubris yet manages to retain influence, which is not to be lightly ignored.
1 man changing his mind after having done irreversible damage to the environment near the end of his career = not as relevant
He should be spending all his time and energy breeding elephants. Instead, he is giving talks about how he got away with this and making a living from it.
Also, is preventing desertification, which affects far more species, actually the wrong reason? Sure his analysis was wrong and so it didn't work, but his motivation seemed better than you're suggesting by saying "for the wrong reasons"?