(engine revving) (elephant trumpeting) (people yelling) ♪ (Jose speaking English) (Jose speaking English) ♪ (elephant trumpeting) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Asian elephants are social and intelligent giants that live in tight- knit family groups.

Like their larger African cousins, they need a lot of space to survive and migrate in search of food.

♪ Seventy-five years ago, around a hundred thousand of them roamed the forests of Southern Asia.

But today, their habitat has been reduced by 85% - and their numbers cut in half.

Almost two-thirds of those that survive live in India, surrounded by 1.4 billion people.

(bikes clanking) Open space is hard to come by, and the southern state of Kerala has become a hotspot of human-elephant conflict.

(people yelling) (Jose speaking English) ♪ NARRATOR: The state of Kerala was officially formed in 1956, and in the decades that followed, it saw an increase in the farming of cash crops such as pepper, tea, and rubber.

(Jose speaking English) NARRATOR: In 1969, some settlers unknowingly put their new village, called Puliyankolly, in a critical location: directly in the path of the largest breeding population of Asian elephants.

♪ The giants often move through the landscape along well-established pathways that they pass down from one generation to the next.

(Jose speaking English) MAN: Hey!

NARRATOR: The struggle for space leads to clashes - sometimes with tragic consequences.

Elephant encounters result in the deaths of nearly 400 people each year in India.

MAN: Hey!

♪ (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) SPECTATOR: Oh my god!

(Rajendran speaking Malayalam) (elephant trumpeting) ♪ NARRATOR: But more frequently it's economic losses that affect local communities.

♪ (Jose speaking English) (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) ♪ (Jayan speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: By the early 2000s, the conflict had reached a boiling point.

(Jose speaking English) NARRATOR: The study revealed that elephants caused 75% of crop damage, leading to steep economic losses to farms and property.

Bonnet macaques and wild boar added to the damage.

♪ (Jose speaking English) ♪ NARRATOR: That's when Wildlife Trust of India, or WTI for short, proposed a bold solution.

Instead of getting the elephants away from the village, what if they relocated the village away from the elephants?

(Jayan speaking Malayalam) (rooster clucking) (Jayan speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: The 'no' kick- started crucial talks on balancing conservation with local culture.

(Jose speaking English) NARRATOR: So, WTI decided to bring in someone who could help them understand the villager's concerns - and in turn, help explain the stakes and the opportunity to the community.

SHAJAN: Hello.

JAYAN: Hello.

(Jose speaking English) ♪ (Shajan speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: Shajan went door to door gathering stories of village life.

(Sajitha speaking Malayalam) (Suseela speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: Isolated in the forest, the community faced other challenges as well.

Shajan identified their daily obstacles and advocated for relocation to alleviate them.

(Rajendran speaking Malayalam) (Shajan speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: Eventually, people in Puliyankolly began to reconsider the proposal.

♪ (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) (Jose speaking English) ♪ NARRATOR: The land was carefully chosen so the villagers could continue farming the same crops they were accustomed to growing.

♪ (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: In 2009, with all the villagers on board, the team launched a complex relocation plan.

♪ (Jose speaking English) ♪ (Jayan speaking Malayalam) ♪ ♪ ♪ (Jose speaking English) ♪ (Sajitha speaking Malayalam) ♪ (Jose speaking English) NARRATOR: WTI focused on both preserving the community's customs and tracking their economic well-being.

(Shajan speaking Malayalam) (Jose speaking English) (Shajan speaking Malayalam) (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) (Suseela speaking Malayalam) (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) ♪ NARRATOR: Alongside the improvements to their living conditions, incomes have surged by over 300% in the 15 years since the relocation.

♪ (Rajendran speaking Malayalam) NARRATOR: Nearby healthcare centers boosted vaccination rates.

And improved school attendance led to greater literacy.

♪ ♪ Today, the number of families reporting crop damage from elephants has fallen by 50%, even though the new village is only three miles from the old one.

♪ And Puliyankolly wasn't the only success, three more villages have been relocated outside the corridor since the project began.

♪ The elephant's lives have improved too.

♪ (Jose speaking English) NARRATOR: That means this vital corridor is now an unbroken passageway for over 6,500 elephants.

♪ The team has even documented renewed tiger movements in the reclaimed wilderness with their camera traps!

♪ Making room for elephants may not be simple, but outcomes like this one in the world's most populous nation show it can be done.

♪ These local efforts also provide examples for much bigger initiatives, both at the national level, and across the entire range of Asian elephants.

♪ Today, 13 countries have united under the Jakarta Declaration to protect Asian elephants by working to preserve habitats, ensure safe border crossing, minimize human- elephant conflict, and foster community support for coexistence.

♪ (Jose speaking English) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪