The Tropical Fish Club of Burlington (VT) has for the past five years or so
had a Breeder's Award Program designed to encourage the breeding & maintenance
of rare/endangered/threatened species. This is done in two ways.
First, the point value of the fish is based on a combination of difficulty of
breeding and availability in the hobby. While availability in the hobby does
not map to situation in the wild, this criteria still encourages people to
work with the fish that are not getting all the attention (e.g., not
praecox!).
Secondly, the breeder gets bonus points for each successive generation of a
species presented. Most BAP programs only allow you to get points for a fish
once; this one was designed to encourage people to maintain a particular
species for many years. There's no way to ensure that the fish aren't inbred,
of course, but we wanted to at least recognize the concept of (gasp) working
with the same species for many years.
I have not lived in VT for several years but will be heading out there in a
couple of weeks & will see if I can get information on how well this aspect
of the BAP is working. I'll post the info here if anyone's interested.
Cynthia Teague
20676cmt at msu.edu