At Manas National Park, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, an insurgency in the 1990s forced locals who were suffering from a lack of livelihoods, to turn to poaching. Wildlife numbers drastically declined, especially the Greater One-horned Rhino. Eventually there were none left. A student-led movement rose up from within the local indigenous Boro community, forming the Manas Maozigendri Ecotourism Society (MMES) in 2003. An initiative to bring the land and its wildlife back from the brink. MMES embarked on a journey of restoration, galvanising the local community to convince poachers to stop, as well as reintroducing the locally extinct Great One-horned Rhino back into Manas. Their success in turning poachers into patrol guards and having rhinos walk the lands of Manas once again has allowed MMES to develop ecotourism as a source of sustainable livelihood for the Boro community. MMES’s blueprint for community conservation is a positive model on how wildlife conservation efforts can benefit both wildlife and people.