I have spent the last few days in Downtown Dallas for the Elephant Mangers Association annual conference, sponsored by the Dallas Zoo, and caught up with some old friends and made some more.
I was also fortunate to meet Dr Charles Foley, who has been working in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania on elephants for the past 20 years. He gave an inspiring talk about his work as well as the ivory crisis.
My talk was the last in the schedule and was due to talk on that topic and an update from the field. I thought about changing it and focusing more on our work but then I decided to keep it the same, to sandwich the event with (I hope) two powerful messages about the ivory crises and what needs to be done and fast.