>Starter Pokemon can (almost) never be found in the wild,

File: Kanto_starters_I.png (179KB, 529x294px) Image search: [Google]

179KB, 529x294px

>Starter Pokemon can (almost) never be found in the wild, with no known wild locations and even being deemed as very rare because you can't naturally find them, having to resort to trading with other players instead
>Given to new trainers as their first Pokemon despite their rarity, and how they often are very useful and powerful Pokemon that will become some of the best in the region
Are starter Pokemon made rare because they're often given to so many new trainers, or are they naturally extremely rare and given to only a select few trainers (read: millions of trainers if we apply other players as in-game trainers) to begin with?
Are they powerful and rare in numbers purely by nature, and therefor are deemed as being highly valuable for new trainers to begin with for their potential power, or are they forced into scarcity because their powerful nature makes them highly desirable to be given as starters (ie, keep the "demand" high and create false scarcity)?
Where do any of them come from, and how do professors get so many of them? Why not keep them for researching or to protect such a rare species and help them repopulate to raise their numbers? And if they're in such remote and protected places that make them extremely rare, why take them from there in the first place and give them to small children as their first Pokemon rather than some more common basic Pokemon?

This is all assuming that other actual players act as actual trainers in the in-game world, but if the in-game logic is that only a very select few of trainers have these starter types then that just raises further stress to the last couple of questions.