A stint in Southern Africa opened his eyes to the escalating plight of elephants and rhinos. Following a nearly two-decade respite, elephants were being slaughtered once again for the illegal ivory trade. The next seven years saw their populations plummet by 30% across the continent, largely due to poaching. Rhinos, meanwhile, were being targeted for their horns, with more than 7,000 killed in a decade.

Mander was enraged by what he saw. He also was inspired. Realising his particular skillset could be put to use defending wildlife, he decided to dedicate himself entirely to this new mission. “Nature gave me a second chance – an opportunity to reengineer myself for a higher calling,” he says. He sold his homes in Australia and used the proceeds and his savings to create the International Anti-Poaching Foundation, a non-profit organisation that brought a militarised, special operations-approach to wildlife protection. He worked along the Mozambican border of Kruger National Park in South Africa – the epicentre of the so-called rhino war – and ran a unit in Victoria Falls National Park in Zimbabwe. Incursions into Kruger from Mozambique significantly declined under his watch, and for the eight years his group operated in Victoria Falls, the park did not lose a single rhino – the only such example in Zimbabwe over that period.

But while he and his men were able to keep poaching at bay in the areas they patrolled, Mander was beginning to realise that what he provided was only a temporary Band-Aid rather than a true remedy. Evidence was building that a ‘war on poaching’ approach does not work for conserving wildlife long-term. Instead, community buy-in is key. “You cannot sustain an ongoing offensive against the local population as a means of conservation,” Mander says. “The long-term solution depends on winning the hearts and minds of the community.”

By 2015, Mander was backing off of the seek-and-destroy approach to protecting wildlife and was searching for a new solution. He hoped to find a model that would engage communities and incentivise them to support conservation, but that would not be dependent on tourism or trophy hunting for funding. Tourism ebbs and flows with current events and is too a fickle an industry to achieve the type of steady, long-term conservation Mander hoped for. More importantly, vast areas of Africa lack the dynamic scenery, straight-forward logistics and creature comforts needed to reap tourism’s benefits.

Trophy hunting, on the other hand, attracts a hardier crowd. But it comes with its own slew of problems and, according to many involved, is an industry in decline. As a vegan and animal rights advocate, Mander was also specifically looking for an answer that would not involve killing animals – and could even serve as a replacement for hunting.

While mulling over all of this, Mander happened to stumbled on an article in the New York Times about women graduating from the US Army’s elite ranger school. If women could serve as military rangers, he realized, why couldn’t they serve as wildlife rangers on the front lines in Africa?