Tuy Sereivathana of the Cambodian Elephant Conservation Group (CECG)—known to local villagers as “Uncle Elephant”—was recently awarded the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize for Asia. Given annually to one person from each of the inhabited continents, the Goldman Prize is the largest and most prestigious award for individual grassroots environmental efforts. Tuy was recognized for his success in diminishing human-elephant conflict in rural Cambodia through education and other community-based methods.

Historically, the Asian elephant had a strong presence in 13 countries from Iran to Indonesia, but in the past century their numbers have declined significantly, with current estimates placing the total wild population below 40,000 (some as low as 30,000). Cambodia has one of the largest wild Asian elephant populations in all of Southeast Asia, numbering just under 400. With past threats of poaching and illegal hunting now in check, the greatest ongoing threat to the Asian elephant is loss of habitat. As Cambodia moves forward after decades of war, the dramatic surges in population combined with vastly unregulated development have increased human-elephant conflict, driving desperate farmers to use lethal methods against elephants that have found new food sources in their crops.

Tuy’s success in protecting the Asian elephant in Cambodia—there have been no confirmed elephant deaths due to human-elephant conflict since 2005—stems from his lifelong passion for wildlife and his personal understanding of the complexities of human-elephant conflicts. In 1975, when Tuy was a child, his family left Phnom Phen and moved to the countryside to escape the brutality of the Pol Pot regime. This rural upbringing left Tuy with a love of nature, especially elephants.

In 1988, Tuy won a scholarship to study at a university in Belarus, where he majored in forestry. After his return to Cambodia, he became a park ranger and gradually came to recognize the inability of rural communities to handle human-elephant conflicts. Gaining the trust of villagers, he developed simple, cheap and effective solutions such as using foghorns, fireworks, fences and hot chiles to ward off elephants. He introduced the idea of crop rotation, teaching farmers to plant crops of cucumber and white radish that have short growing cycles and can be harvested several times a year, before elephants know they are ripe. Instead of growing foods elephants like, such as watermelon and bananas, Tuy taught villagers to grow the plants the animals hate, such as eggplant and chile peppers.

In 2003, Tuy joined the Cambodian Elephant Conservation Group as the Human-Elephant Conflict Team Leader, a project cosponsored by Cambodian government, community organizations and Fauna and Flora International (FFI). In 2006, he took over the project full time. Believing that education is the route to a long-term improvement in human-elephant relations, Tuy has helped establish four schools in rural communities that teach Cambodian children about respect for nature and coexisting with elephants and other wildlife.

Sophal Shout, a former poacher and community leader, now teaches villagers methods for fending off elephants. “When I was a poacher, I made a mistake,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that Tuy helped him to find the right path.

The Asian elephant has long served as a symbol of national pride and religious importance for Cambodia. Thanks to Tuy’s efforts this reverence is slowly being strengthened along with hope for the survival of the species. Tuy has ambitious plans: He hopes the population of Asian elephants will more than double in the next 20 years, which would be a tremendous feat given the species’ long gestation and maturation periods.

For the complete list of the 2010 Goldman Prize winners, visit goldmanprize.org/recipients/current.