Trevor Zoo Does Indianapolis - Day 3

We went to the general session at 8:00, which was for everyone in AZA to go to, all 2,000+ attendees. President of the AZA, Dan Ashe, spoke about his mission and goals for the organization and then introduced Dr. Carl Jones, a conservationist. Carl mentioned how he had saved various bird species from the brink of extinction, some of which only had one viable breeding pair left when he began. He instilled hope and gave everyone the notion that it's never too late and although it make take years, decades, or centuries to restore or recreate an ecosystem, we still need to try. We were then introduced to the CEO of the Humane society, Wayne Pacelle, who spoke about his own goals for the Humane society and how they could potentially join with AZA, in hope of an alliance in the future. We then attended an Animal session about animal welfare and learned more about other institution's enrichment programs and training. Then was the exhibit hall where we had lunch and got to walk around the exhibits, Sam even discovered that he was a bird in his previous life via virtual reality!

- Tiffany Hatfield

Sam discovering his inner bird

We test out a potential future zoo exhibit