[originaltext]M: So, what exactly are you doing to protect the elephants here?

M: So, what exactly are you doing to protect the elephants here?
W: Well, we have managed to raise a lot of money for this project. A lot of it is being used to compensate farmers for the damage that elephants do to their crops.
M: How does that protect the elephants?
W: Since the elephants cause damage to the crops, farmers are often tempted to go out and kill the elephants.
M: I see. So, the farmers don’t have a real problem with the elephants until the elephants start eating the crops. But why do the elephants do that?
W: Well, there aren’t enough trees to provide them with food on the land that has been reserved for them.
M: Mm. But if you successfully protect the elephants, their numbers will grow and they will need more food. That means that ’they’ll need more land.
W: That’s true, but we’ve solved that problem too. What we do is move some elephants to reservations where there are relatively few.
M: So that’s where you spend another large proportion of the money you raise.
W: Actually, it isn’t very expensive because we share the cost with the people who run the other reservations.
M: I see. How do you decide which elephants to move?
W: We use two criteria. The first is that we maintain the genetic diversity of the elephant herd. The- second is that we transport the more aggressive members of the herd, which results in us spending less money compensating farmers.
M: Are there any plans to expand the reservation?
W: We have allocated some money to land purchases, but such purchases could have a detrimental effect on the local human population, so we rarely do it.
M: What kinds of research are you doing on the elephants here?
W: We’re mainly studying the way that elephants interact with each other within a herd.
M: I see. Well, thanks very much for your time.
W: My pleasure.