Elephant peacemaker given Goldman Prize

Courtesy / Geoffrey Cain

Sereivathana Tuy cares for elephants at the Phnom Ta Mao Zoo in Takeo, a province in southeastern Cambodia. He has helped villagers learn to live with elephants instead of killing them.

Sereivathana Tuy (right) teaches villagers how to plant crops to fend off hungry elephants and prevent attacks.

Photo: Courtesy / Geoffrey Cain

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Geoffrey Cain, Special to The Chronicle

Monday, April 19, 2010

(04-19) 04:00 PDT Prey Proseth, Cambodia -- Sokha Seang, a 32-year-old rice farmer, recalls the night last spring when three elephants destroyed his home.

"They wanted to eat the food that we stored in our homes," he said. "I lost everything."

Poor farmers like Seang have felt obligated to kill the elephants - with guns, sharp bamboo sticks or poison - because they cannot afford to lose their crops. But now, thanks to a soft-spoken man known affectionately as "Uncle Elephant," farmers have found a more peaceful way of living with the elephants, said Seang, who lives in this village in the southwest province of Koh Kong.

In Cambodia's elephant zones, Sereivathana Tuy has stopped farmers from cutting the animal's nationwide population - which stands at less than 400. For that, he is one of six recipients of the Goldman Environmental Prize, to be awarded today in San Francisco.

Seang credits Tuy for his newfound harmony with the hungry behemoths. Instead of using deadly weapons against the endangered Asian elephants, Seang and other villagers now ward off attacks with hot chile peppers, fences, fireworks and foghorns.

Tuy, 39, was a park ranger in the 1990s when he developed a community-based model for ending human-elephant conflict that revolves around building trust with farmers and giving them the resources to fend off elephant attacks. In 2003, he brought his model to Flora and Fauna International, a nonprofit wildlife organization based in Cambridge, England.

The project is among recent efforts across Asia and Africa to save dwindling elephant populations.

"It ties in with a growing realization," said Simon Hedges, Asian Elephant coordinator at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, that methods relying heavily on law enforcement "haven't worked especially well."

Teach kids first

The Cambodian program begins with teachers who educate children on how to co-exist with elephants in one of four schools across the country in isolated communities. The children then pass the new knowledge to their parents. Soon, "the whole village is talking about these techniques," Tuy said.

The plan also encourages farmers to alternate rapidly growing crops such as cucumbers and white radishes, which can be harvested several times a year before elephants have the chance to eat them. Tuy also encourages farmers to stop planting crops that elephants love - watermelons, sugarcane and bananas - in favor of ones they detest, such as eggplant and chile peppers.

"This way, the villagers keep their harvest and we conserve the elephant population," he said.

In Cambodia, the clash between elephants and humans peaked after the communist Khmer Rouge regime was ousted in 1979. Vast deforestation followed, forcing elephants to search for food and water on farmlands near their traditional forests.

Poaching drops off

At the same time, wealthy Cambodians sought expensive elephant tails, tusks and the tips of their trunks - body parts they believe are symbols of power. This led to widespread poaching, Tuy says.

Before Tuy became director of his elephant project in 2005, conservationists would often report elephant killings to the police, who would then jail the perpetrators until a fine, sometimes as much as $2,400, could be negotiated.

Today, poaching has been reduced significantly. Irate farmers, however, are still known to kill elephants that threaten their crops. Tuy says law enforcement is just part of the solution. "Ultimately, you need education and improved livelihoods," he said.

Love of pachyderms

Ironically, Tuy's passion for wildlife sparked under the Khmer Rouge.

In 1975, he and his family were forced to leave the capital of Phnom Penh and toil on a rice farm in southeastern Kandal province. When the Maoist regime was ousted four years later, Tuy and his family returned to the city to find their house destroyed and most of their relatives missing. Depressed, he returned to the countryside to continue farming before a chance encounter changed his life.

In 1981, a group of mahouts, or elephant trainers selling traditional medicines, arrived near his village with two elephants bedecked in opulent jewels.

"I saw the elephants, and I was amazed by them," Tuy recalled. "I fed the elephants for the first time. I couldn't sleep that night because I saw elephants in front of my eyes."

In 1988, Tuy won a scholarship to study forestry at a university in Minsk, the capital of what is today Belarus. Four years later, he returned to Cambodia to work as a park ranger.

Tuy estimates that there have been between five and 10 elephant attacks on humans since 2003, and only one death since 2005 - a sign that farmers are using safer methods to drive elephants away.

He hopes that his program will double the elephant population to 1,000 elephants in 20 years. He concedes that would be a difficult feat, given the animal's long gestation and maturation process. Asian elephants, which can live as long as 60 years, don't reproduce until they are between 8 and 14 years of age - enough time to be killed by predators, poachers or disease.

For now, however, Tuy's biggest hope in saving the elephants is changing Cambodian attitudes.

"When I was a poacher, I made a mistake," said Sophal Shout, a 54-year-old community leader in Prey Proseth who teaches villagers about alternative ways of repelling elephant attacks. Tuy "helped me find the right path."

Endangered elephants

There are three species of elephants: the African Bush Elephant, African Forest Elephant and the smaller Asian elephant.

African: The largest populations, found in eastern and southern Africa, are threatened by the ivory trade. At the start of the 20th century, the African population was estimated at between 5 million and 10 million. By the end of the century, poaching and deforestation had reduced their numbers to about 500,000.

Asian: Experts say 40,000 to 50,000 wild Asian elephants live across Asia, 60 percent of them in India. In Cambodia, deforestation has caused the elephant population to dwindle from 2,000 in 1995 to fewer than 400 in 2010. In Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, China and Nepal, experts say only 300 or so are left in each country.

- Geoffrey Cain