By Donna M. Recktenwalt
“Absolutely!” answers Harry Specht of the AKA, chairman of the species maintenance program for Aphyosemion australe (chocolate).
Informally, every hobbyist who keeps, breeds, and distributes strong, healthy fish is a participant in species maintenance. Such individual efforts keep species in the hobby, and provide the opportunity for others to both enjoy and distribute them further.
On the personal scale, species maintenance involves a personal commitment to keep and breed a given species over an extended period of time; to maintain as diverse a gene pool in your breeding stock as possible; and to distribute any extra resulting fry.
On a larger scale, species maintenance involves participation in an organized group, such as the AKA’s Species Maintenance Committee, where bloodlines are maintained and breeding stock is selectively exchanged among the participating members to maintain genetic diversity in the overall population. Individuals distribute their excess stock by regular means.
There is no question that the topic of species maintenance and captive breeding is a timely one, or that it will continue to gain in importance as humankind irrevocably exerts continuing pressure on the natural world. With volative political and environmental conditions extant not only in Africa and South America, but also in many other places as well, numerous species are already disappearing entirely from the wild or becoming impossible to collect.
As Roger Langton has pointed out, in northern Mexico Cyprinodon alvarezi, C. longidorsalis, C. veronicae, and Megupsilon apoues are already extinct in the wild. In West Africa by 1993 Fundulopanchax walkeri GH2 and Epiplaty chaperi schreiberi were probably extinct, and other F. walkeri populations along the Irovy Coast were probably in trouble.
According to Wolfgang Eberl, Aphyosemion elberti (bualanum) N’tui is extinct due to land clearing, although it is being maintained within the hobby. The same is true of several of the Cynolebias species from Uruguay (Valizas), which are no longer found in the wild, including C. cheradophilius, C. viarius, C. melanotaenia and C. luteoflammumlatus. Epiplatys esethanus may be in serious trouble due to road construction in Cameroon, and Chromaphyosemion LEC 93/26 or 24 will likely disappear as the city of Libreville, Gabon expands.
Of particular concern, according to Roger Langton, are “F. fallax (deltanensis), F. sjoestedti, F. powelli, F. arnoldi, and F. gulares. Many species of Aphanus are on the verge of extinction for much the same reasons as the U.S. desert pupfish.”
Al Anderson, who traveled to Brazil a year ago, reported that it was very disturbing to see the signs of overpopulation everywhere, with styrofoam cups. plastic bags, bottles, oil and scum in evidence along the banks of the Amazon River.
But the problems are not only in foreign lands, or with “exotic” species. Here in the U.S., a number of species are listed as endangered and protected, either by the individual states, or by the federal government. Among these are nearly a dozen species and populations of Cyprinodon, half a dozen species of Fundulus, and several of Crenichthys. In northern Mexico, a number of the Goodeidae and Poeciliidae face the same problems.
Some efforts are currently in place to maintain some of the threatened species, including participation by a number of zoos and universities, either in direct efforts at conservation, or in conjunction with ongoing research studies. But, as Harry Specht pointed out in the July/ August issue of the Journal of the American Killifish Association (JAKA), “the zoo breeding programs [especially for mammals] have been very successful, but their space and fund restraints limit the number of animals that can be handled in this fashion…. They are overwhelmed by [the] sheer numbers of fish and invertebrates that need to be managed.”
The individual killikeeper can make a differenceand should make the effort to do so.
— G.C.K.A. Newsletter, September 1997