[Bill Little]

Peter — I would take minor exception with your comments in the last sentence of your post. Yes, you have 100 members involved with the Paro species in Germany, but you also have a well-established organization that has been in existence for years and tends to provide base to promote the species. I believe the development of the ALFA will provide an avenue to band North American hobbyists together in the same manner. However I also believe these hobbyists are out there in significant numbers already but are unidentified. For example, if we were able to trace individuals that purchased Paros from the importers already in our small group I think we would see hobbyist not included in our group of 10. Additionally, I believe if we were to contact many of the clubs around the country we would find individuals in those clubs maintaining and breeding Paros. Some of those individuals would also not be included on our list. Indeed I would suggest that the large club auctions conducted once or twice a year by these clubs would be another undocumented source of Paros. My P. linkei came from one such auction. The original breeder has a nice colony established, but again is not involved with our efforts. What I am saying is we have more of an effort going here than meets the eye and perhaps with the expansion of an organization like ALFA these individuals will be identified eventually.