Oh this is such a great site. I've been a huge fan of elephants since 1993 and have great admiration for all the lovely people whose work supports them. I am very pleased to see this site, among others cropping up, that supports the elephants.

Elephants are so special and wonderful. They've taught me a lot about what it means to be human, and dare I say it, made me a better person.

I look forward to reading more.

Speaking of webcams, I've also been watching the one at Pete's Pond and it seems to be turned on for part of the year (the dry season) and during the rest of the year the web site shows reruns of the best footage. Many elephants congregate at Pete's Pond, but there are other creatures too: a wide variety of birds, ostriches, warthogs, impala, lions...it's a hot spot for wildlife. I suppose a cam in Amboseli might work if it was situated in an area that gets a lot of traffic. One of the things I love about the cam at Pete's Pond is it shows the changes in activity throughout the day. The animals all seem to have a schedule they stick to like clockwork.

I also watch the one at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee where elephants live an enriched and relatively free captive life, in that they make their own decisions within the several hundred acres they are (by necessity) confined to. All of their residents are ex-circus slaves and zoo residents and the joy on their faces when they arrive and step out of the trailer is unmistakable. PAWS also has one in their Asian elephant habitat.

Although the cameras are great, I love to read updates on how the elephants are doing and what they're up to.

Sara, thank you for your enthusiasm. It is infectious. You inspire me to get more material onto this website. But to answer your immediate points.

Echo: we don't know if she's pregnant. She wasn't seen in oestrus but theoretically she could be pregnant because her last calf, Esprit, is now two years and eight months old. Generally a female will conceive again when her youngest calf is between two and three years old. At the moment we are filming Echo's family as part of a 13 part series for Animal Planet. It means we check up on her just about every day. If she comes into oestrus will will know it. If she is already pregnant, of course, she won't, but as one of the oldest females in the population I suspect she isn't pregnant yet and possibly won't conceive again, but then she always surprises us.

Ely: he left the family in 2000 when he was only 10 years old. We saw him a few times afterward but not again. We think he is probably living in Tanzania.

Webcam: it would be fabulous and we've thought about many times. However, as Hans said, there is not a central place to put one. Because of the extensive swamp system elephants can drink over a large area. Vegetation is also widely distributed. All the same, there are some places we could try. We would have to find someone to provide the funds for the equipment, etc.

Videos and Photos: In the meantime, we can post video clips and photos, and this will happen. We're still organizing materials.

Please keep up your spirit and love of elephants. It means so much to us.

I am very pleased to find a really great site coming to life, and I'm glad it didn't take too long after seeing your DVD and plugging Cynthia Moss into google to getting all the way to now knowing that Echo might be pregnant again-- and that other babies have been born and are growing; the whole family, and the other families, and I want to see them. I want to see them all. I wish for each elephant to have a big phat site with daily blogs and sounds and videos and photos to download. I would love to have live streaming so that I could watch them all the time, just hanging out being elephants and making all the elephant music. I think it would be tremendous if you could use all the footage you must have taken for the other films and research, and if you had paid subscriptions to part of your site, there would be more funding to take care and to buy whatever land is neccessary for their growth and blissful expansion.

Is there a family album? family trees? special photos and blurbs associated with the animals-- my God it would take forever to index everything!!! What a treat for a team of interns to be able to go through research and re-discover the last thirty years of work in your poetic and bold voice! And wouldn't be worth twenty or fifty to have access to a picture of every elephant in the refuge? Incredible! Award winning! and the hits wouldn't be like the poor yahoo group I went through to get here- scant, I was .. I mean people love to look at elephants! they want to hear them! they want to recognize them like you do! they want to have favorites and to say, I bet that's one of Bulls young sons..

I'm just so happy that you are there! that the elephants are there. But what about Ely? Is he still there?

Sara