I think it would be useful to the aims of the Project, if the UK based Paro friends who are committed to breeding and maintaining these little jewels, were to form a loose group within the Project, to promote the Project, share information, and keep an up to date localised census of the stock held within the UK. This cohort could act as a virtual hub for dispersing surplus stock to those new friends attracted to the cause.
We should embrace the imperative to propogate, and be prepared to sell on our fish onto other Paro friends if our own breeding attempts with specific species have failed. I have always understood that keep these fish and not breed them is consumption and not preservation.
Such a distribution hub would ease the introduction of paro species with proper identification and location data into the UK. This could be achieved by the sharing of costs in bringing fish from mainland Europe into the UK. I agree with Helene by the way, and some basic research underlines her hunch,that it is much cheaper to get a return flight on a budget airline from Manchester to Hamburg (For instance), than it is to pay for a 24hour courier service.
That link from the mainland to these islands is crucial if Stock levels of the most endangered species are to grow, but also in ensuring that the gene pool of individual species, when refreshed, is maintained in distinct populations.
The costs of collecting the fish and returning to the UK could be shared by all those in the UK who were recieving these fish. And the fish could be delivered to their new keepers via an agreed, central meeting/distibution point (eg Motorway service station).
This could work, and i ask all the UK paro friends who are interested in helping each other in this way to contact me via private message.
However, perhaps the biggest difficulty, is in establishing de facto distribution hubs on the mainland. It is rare, i would suspect, that any one airport city has more than one paro friend with surplus stock at any given time. So we would need the locations and ParoProject mailbox contact details of all respondents to our European wide census, so that we can map where the surplus stock is and, ideally, congregate it around any place that we can access directly from a UK airport.
I would very much like to attend an international convention in Hamburg (although us British are infamously ill equipped in ‘foreign’ languages!!), but my heart sinks at the prospect of waiting ten months to get my eager hands on species such as anjunganensis,alfredi,rubrimontis or quindecim.
John