Kevin, I will be doing that through the story. The (former) poachers are turned into creatures to have them be broken down from their state of rock hard pride. The transformed poachers go from their normal wicked lifestyle to living in the wildness (sleeping in a bed to sleeping on hard ground, trees, rocks), having to escape poachers/hunters coming after them, eating things that "civilized society" is disgusted by (grass, arthropods, and more), having to hide from people seeing them (one eyewitness is all that it takes and then twenty people are coming after you), and with nothing with but their wits to survive. Being hunted down like the animals you hunted down, would sure shake someone up, wouldn't it?
An example of this would be the poacher who becomes a northern hairy-nosed wombat guy. Northern hairy-nosed wombats are critically endangered with only a couple hundred left and live in a small national forest park called Epping Forest National forest. The forest is not even open to visitors and only volunteers, rangers, and scientists are allowed in. He with some other poachers break-in to kill a few of the wombats for a personal order. A rich person wants them for their meat and his wife wants a nice soft fur coat (these wombats have the softest fur of any wombat). When they can't find any, the group splits up and the guy transforms. The other poachers meet back up and see this weird large wombat creature making weird noises at them. The other poachers then figure it would be easier to kill just one large wombat than go through the effort of killing a few, so they turn their guns at him. This would break him down a bit, wouldn't it?
I will show the poachers to be relatable to real poachers and show off why people poach animals. The answers vary from money, commercial gain, consumption (either to prevent starvation or they just like the meat), trophies, pleasure and thrill in killing wildlife, pride, disagreeing with certain hunting regulations, claiming a traditional right to hunt, disagreeing with legal authority, say it is a part of personal or cultural history, or even feeling exhilarated and/or thrilled by outsmarting game wardens. I will be showing off the poachers being brought down into a broken state of repentance, which will be a big theme in my books. They will get new jobs after they are broken down into repentance, hunting poachers (no killing), fighting against the poacher syndicates (yes, that is a real thing, they are like the mafia and they are incredibly dangerous), and taking care of invasive animals (feral cat soup anyone?). I hope this helps explain things for you and thank you for feeling concerned. Don't be afraid to give me some more responses.
Also, thank you for the locust information, I will be reading them.