Some of the most effective conservationists working today used to be the people conservationists were fighting. A new wave of eco-tourism projects across Asia and Africa is hiring former fishermen, loggers, poachers and snare-setters as guides, rangers and boat crews — and the results are measurable.
The standout example is Project Hiu in Indonesia, founded in 2018 by Australian filmmaker Madison Stewart after she documented the shark fishing trade in East Lombok. Indonesia catches more sharks than any other country — over 12% of the global supply — and in villages like Tanjung Luar and Gili Maringkik, fishing is often the only income, even when it means breaking laws protecting species like whale sharks. Project Hiu, named after the Indonesian word for shark, now employs around 80 fishermen on 15 boats to run snorkelling trips with blacktip reef sharks and sailing days around East Lombok instead. The same crews help tag and study their former catch, contributing to a world-first tagging of 10 tiger sharks in Indonesian waters, and the project has even sent two ex-shark fishermen to university.
Similar flips are happening elsewhere. At Misool Resort in Raja Ampat, built on a former shark-finning camp, the beach where catches were once killed is now a terrace where divers have their morning coffee, and the Misool Foundation's ranger patrols are staffed largely by former dynamite fishers — shark numbers inside the reserve have doubled since 2012. In the Philippines' Masungi Georeserve in Rizal province, veteran ranger Ruben Gianan once logged the same forest he now protects as a master navigator.
In Tanzania, guide Anderson Mgesi grew up eating bushmeat in the Iringa region before his family was evicted during the expansion of Ruaha National Park in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After his grandfather was mauled by a leopard caught in a trap, he trained at Mkuyu Wildlife School and now guides at Usangu Expedition Camp with safari company Asilia Africa, supporting his extended family on a steady wage. And at Shinta Mani Wild in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains, former snare-setters work with the Wildlife Alliance to intercept logging and poaching of pangolins, clouded leopards and Malayan sun bears — the Alliance has removed roughly 350,000 traps in the region so far.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple: where you spend your holiday money can decide whether a former poacher picks up a rifle or a pair of binoculars. These lodges and projects turn your trip fee directly into local salaries, ranger patrols and research — the model conservationists like Stewart argue actually works, because it tackles why people hunt rather than just telling them to stop. Book a stay or a day trip at any of these and you're not just seeing wildlife; you're funding the people who now protect it.
