A 1-800 Number That Helps Animals and Humans Coexist | National Geographic

[Music] If it's a herd of elephants that have completely destroyed their crops, the reaction is to hit back at the animal, either injuring it or killing it fatally. One of the biggest things we found was that even though the government has compensation mechanisms in place, less than 30% of people who were affected were filing.

[Music] And so we set up this very elegant system where it's connected to an 1800 number. We circulated this number to 300 villages around Bandipur, and people would call the number. Our field team would respond every single time; they would go there, assess what had happened, and help them file the documentation.

In just 10 months, we've now helped 3,000 families. What we're doing is just improving the efficiency, perhaps in sometimes removing the corruption that's in place and getting people to feel that somebody cares. Somebody will come when I lose my crops; somebody will come when my cow is killed; somebody will come when my family member is injured.

What's happened now with tourism is that there are rules in place, but in terms of regulating how tourists behave, what they wear, how they take their pictures, I've seen huge variations depending basically on the guide and the naturalist that's sitting with them. So you have a very good guide and naturalist, the tourists are very well behaved.