Your president, Jay Barlow, is currently representing the SMM at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-CBD) in Cancun, Mexico. The Society was invited to participate by Mexico’s environmental minister, Rafael Pachiano Alaman, who was one of the recipients of the SMM Conservation Merit Award at the last biennial. The theme of this year’s meeting (COP13) is the mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation. In this context, “mainstreaming” means spreading the responsibility for biodiversity conservation from the environmental ministries to other sectors of government, including fisheries, forestry, and agriculture.  Barlow issued a position statement from the SMM pleading for additional help in preventing the extinction of the vaquita:  https://www.cbd.int/cop/cop-13/hls/statements/statement-society-for-marine-mammalogy-en.pdf.