I have kept fish all my life from the age of  5 starting with the usual Stickleback’s in a jam jar as most kids did but ending up specialising in Livebearers in the late 1960's early 70's. So many years latter finding myself 50 years old, having done all the show scene and having bred many species of fish for the show fraternity, I decided that I should look for a new and more worth while direction to go with my hobby. And as even at that time it was becoming obvious that species of fish were fast disappearing before most people even knew that they existed let alone having seen them, and so in myown little way I decided to try to do something to try to help. I would frequently hear of scientist and students looking for fish for their studies Not to mention hobbyist and they would almost always be having to go back to the wild for any thing that they wanted.  So I decided to reset up my fish room with just well Providenced livebearers as many species as I could handle and offer them to those who were looking for them, but it was not until I first heard of the plight of the Skiffia francesae in the 1995 that I really started to look at conservation more seriously and realise that the collecting of fish by aquarists had very little detrimental affect on their  survival in the wild, and indeed could be beneficial, also that there were far more damaging forces at work here like Deforestation, Pollution, and the indiscriminate distribution of non-native species. Now I have almost always risen to a challenge so when scientific friends would say to me . Why bother to maintain such a species as S francesae when it can never be viable in the wild again, something inside me would tell me that they were wrong, and I always promised myself that one day we would  prove it but I am not going to get tied up in all the pros and cons of that argument at the moment. Anyway at that time in 1995 I hadn't visited the Rio Teuchitlan and so had not formulated my project for it's restoration. You see the idea for this whole project started with me when I met Ancadio Valdes Gonzales at an American Livebearer Association Convention in 1995. When after a long talk on the Rio Teuchitlan I made a promise to him that be it ever so little I would do what I could for the species of that river. Then towards the end of 1995 Derek Lambert and I got talking and of course the subject that Ancadio and I had discussed came up. Well Derek suggested that if I were that interested then I should visit the place I said that I would love to but that I didn't think it was practical due to the fact that I still had some problems with my legs especially on uneven ground and the skin is so broken down it makes me prone to leg ulcers. Thank God Derek was having none of that and explained if we stuck to the highlands then there should be no trouble with nasty bugs getting into the thin skin on my legs, and although I might not be able to fish I could take along a Video Camera and record the wholetrip in case it was to be a one off trip for me, then I would have something to remember it all by.

( Authors note:-  You see in 1987 I had a bad head on fender-bender in my car with a lorry I was lucky to live, and then they said I wouldn't walk again but they didn't know me!! very well.).

        Well to cut an even longer story short we approached the Aquarian Fish Food people to sponsors a search of the whole area in search of the Ameca Basin for the 2 lost species. This they were happy to do. Well one thing led to another and we ended up covering over 6000 km over 2 weeks including many sites of both the mountain swordtails and the Goodied as well as looking at the pollution problems around Mexico City itself. It was this that really brought home just how severe the problems were in some areas.  It was after I came home and started to go backwards and forwards over the Video that I had taken in order to edit it into something more watchable that the Idea for how to go about the conservation work on the Rio Teuchitlan started to jell in my mind. Well I had heard of this group of Zoologists called FAITAG who were already working with fish conservation and I put this project to them and they decided to adopt it and me. I did  formulate a whole procedure on how to go about this work on the RioTeuchitlan, but alas it had to be put on the back burner, as after a number of meetings with FAITAG they managed to arrange a symposium on Viviparity, at the University of Cuernavaca Mexico in the Feb of 1997. However prior to this meeting I had successfully made contact by e-mail with a Mexican hobbyist who was also a student at    Morelia  University. As it turned out, it was a most fortunate choice as through him I was able to arrange a week long trip for myself and the six other FAITAG members that were attending the symposium, so that they could get a brief first hand glimpse of the problems with  some of the habitats and species.    During the course of this field trip it quickly became apparent that the problems were many and diverse and not jus the rivers like the Rio Teuchitlan were in trouble but many more waters  across the country, and that the preservation of native species would be a more sensible approach initially as these were being lost at an ever increasing rate. So what had started with an intention to help one habitat and it's endemic species was evolving into a far greater project. At the end of this week prior to going to Cuernavaca for the symposium we returned to Morelia week and it was here that we met with senior members of the faculty who showed us around this terrific Aquatic Laboratory Facility that they had. We were however surprised to find that apart from a small turtle project there was  very little going on there at that time, and they had very little equipment. So they were asked and agreed to take part in a conservation project on Native freshwater species. Well the symposium and the next few days seemed to fly by but every one seemed to agree that there was  some serious conservation work to be done here. Then soon we were home again.  Now in matters like this when I get my teeth into something   I never could wait around and were possible have always beleved in striking while the iron is hot, then things don't diminish in importance or get forgotten in time as they so often can. As soon as I was home I started to correspond with my new friends in Morelia and found them  even more keen than I was to get something started. So when the months started slipping by and absolutely nothing of any practical nature seemed to be happening  with F.A.I.T.A.G. both my friend at Morelia and I became concerned that all the initial enthusiasm would be lost if something was not done to keep the pot boiling and the idea's alive. That was when I decided to put into action a plan that I had thought out much earlier, and invite all the Livebearer Specialists Hobby groups I could find to assist with the funding of this project. You may ask why I chose just these groups. Well believe it or not I deliberately wanted to do it with what was one of the smaller groups numerically, as I felt that if I could set up a viable conservation group with just these helping me then with the assistance of all the others almost anything would be possible. I was also getting very frustrated with how the academic world for the most part was not prepared to accept the Hobbyist as having any useful contribution to make to conservation. Well when in May that year the opportunity of a very cheap air fare to Mexico came up I seized the opportunity. Initially the idea was to just take back to Mexico two of the species thought to have been extinct in the wild, namely Skiffia francesae and Zoogoneticus tequila plus a couple of others that were in server problems. To establish them in the Aquariums at the Lab of both Morelia and Cuernavaca in order to establish a pilot project. Not only to have these species maintained in there own native country for the first time in a controlled aquatic environment, but also to give the staff at these two establishments the opportunity to familiarise them selves first hand with the maintenance of these species while we would assist in every way we could. To his credit Dr Peter Burgess volunteered and went over and gave a series of lectures on the subjects of Aquaculture and Fish Diseases. Since which time the project seems to be going from strength to strength with very few problems. Already besides the help it gets from the H.A.L.C.P. The Lab at Morelia has started extending the project of it's own accord besides what help the hobbyists are able to give them and now were as originally there were only two people studying here now there are more than twenty, and hopefully they will become the conservationist of the future.    To bring this up to date each year I have made at least one visit to Morelia at which time I purchase the new equipment and then go on and mount a field trip to survey habitats and bring back new species for the Lab. By doing this all the members of the Goodied family are now being maintained and bred in the lifeboat facility at the Lab that we have set up. The people there have also made a start with other livebearers as well as Killie’s, Catfish, and Chiclids. And as well as having many more students now news of the work of good the Lab is doing is beginning to spread, and international students and Professors are starting to make use of the facilities there. You can pick up the whole story from here through the Annual Reports posted here

at this Webb Site.

                                        Thank you for your interest