We are extremely pleased to announce the launch of a new facet to our club, the Endangered Species Program, or ESP. This program is designed with three primary goals:

In view of the very serious threat currently facing the populations in Lake Victoria and the surrounding basin, and the already existing club member base dedicated to these fish, we decided to initiate this program with these species as our focus. Obviously, other groups of fish from other areas fall into the endangered category. Our hope, as this program sets its roots, is that club members with personal interest in some of these other groups will take the lead in bringing them into the program.

We fully expect the inception of this new program to be as messy and possibly as painful as…well…as childbirth! But, we also fully expect that once through its infancy, these goals will prove to be worthy of our club’s efforts. Just imagine being one of the fortunate few fish-keepers able to successful maintain a colony of fish listed as EW (Extinct in the Wild)! What higher use can our time and tank space be put to?

We hope many members will participate and populate the database to track and document our efforts. In time we hope to use this data to enhance our ability to work with organizations and foundations (on a local, national and international level) who share these goals. We also hope that many of you will be as excited as we are and will be willing to bear with us as this program develops.

Take a look at the pull-down menus. You can see the list of species identified so far as well as the species currently entered into the database.

If you are in the least bit interested in participating, please read through and direct any comments or suggestions to me through the new topic on the forum for this program. We hope to keep all the threads under this new heading directly relating to the mother topic. Things like “Species Located!” or “New Colony Established!” would be great!

Again, we hope that this effort will excite and inspire you to become a participant. We look forward to working with you to create the possibilities that our children and grandchildren can experience the joy of seeing these fish alive and well and not just as a footnote in a scientific journal.

Nick